JANE ADDAMS
Founder of Hull House, Chicago
In her description of the street in which she lived she says,
“Halsted Street is thirty-two miles long, and one of the great thoroughfares of Chicago. Polk street crosses it midway between the stock yards to the south and the ship building yards to the north. For the six miles between these two industries the street is lined with shops of butchers and grocers, with dingy and gorgeous saloons, and places for the sale of ready-made clothing. Once this was the suburbs, but the city has grown steadily and this site has corners on three or four foreign colonies.”
It was in the year 1899 that Jane Addams, for that is the name of the little girl who dreamed she was to make a wagon wheel and help start something in the world, began living in Halsted Street, and named her home Hull House after the first owner.
In those early days people asked her over and over why she had come to live in Halsted Street when she could afford to live among richer people.
One old man used to shake his head and say it was the strangest thing he had ever known. However, there came a time when he thought it was most natural for the settlement to be there to feed the hungry, care for the sick, give pleasure to the young and comfort to the aged.
From the very first Miss Addams and her helpers made their neighbors understand that they were ready to do even the humblest services. They took care of children and nursed the sick. They even washed the dishes and cleaned the house for some of the poor foreign women who had to work all night scrubbing big office buildings.