Hull House Association Records

An inventory of the collection at the University of Illinois at Chicago

Funded by the generous support of the National Endowment for the Humanities

Administrative History

In 1963, Hull-House, the world-famous social settlement house founded by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr, moved from its original location on South Halsted Street in Chicago and decentralized its services. The newly restructured Hull House Association became the administrative entity overseeing a confederation of affiliated organizations that included former settlement houses, newly created community centers, and a myriad of programs hosted in Hull House outposts. Despite extensive changes in administration and operation, the new organization continued the Hull-House commitment to a holistic approach to the problems of urban life through neighborhood-based educational, social, recreational, and economic initiatives. In the early years of the 21st century, responding to neighborhood concerns was still a central tenant of the Jane Addams Hull House Association.

Hull-House had a long history of addressing community needs. The original settlement house was founded in 1889 on the Near West Side of Chicago, one of the poorest and most ethnically diverse city neighborhoods. A volunteer residential staff, who paid room-and board, joined founders Addams and Starr in "settling" in the neighborhood. Living within the settlement in order to respond knowledgeably to neighborhood conditions was a key component of the settlement idea. Through direct experience and through neighborly contact, settlement residents could gain a more realistic understanding of the dynamics of neighborhood life and offer informed and realistic solutions to neighborhood problems. Addams and Starr hoped the experience would be reciprocal and that residents would not only help but also learn from the neighborhood. Both men and women became "residents," as the volunteer staff members were known, but the settlement house held particular significance for women. It offered an alternative living space within the city and a forum for women to become involved in and influence public life.

Initially, the settlement provided cultural and educational opportunities through a wide-ranging program of classes, clubs, and special events. As settlement residents became familiar with their neighborhood the program broadened. Their 1895 charter stated the settlement's purpose as: To provide a center for higher civic and social life, to initiate and maintain educational and philanthropic enterprises, and to investigate and improve the conditions in the industrial districts of Chicago.

The Hull-House neighborhood was a port-of-entry for new immigrants to the city and the settlement became involved in easing the adjustment of immigrants to their new homes and advocating on their behalf. Facilities to meet the specific needs of the neighborhood were added such as a dispensary, playground, gymnasium, and children's building and the settlement quickly expanded to a thirteen-building complex. Settlement residents became skilled social science researchers as they examined their neighborhood as a prerequisite to reform efforts. Hull-House residents investigated tenement conditions, ethnic groups, infant mortality, child labor, midwifery, cocaine use, and the causes and prevention of truancy. Armed with this knowledge, they lobbied for legislative reforms that would ameliorate the poverty and despair found in their neighborhood. During the Progressive Era, Hull-House became an influential leader on issues of labor, housing, public health, juvenile justice, and immigration.

After the death of Jane Addams in 1935, successive head residents struggled with funding and with adapting their programs to a changing neighborhood. Initially Southern and Eastern European, the Near West Side became home to increasing numbers of Mexican immigrants in the 1920s and later African American and Puerto Rican families. In addition, many neighborhood residents were now second and third generation ethnics. The settlement continued many old programs but also initiated new efforts to attract and aid these new neighbors. Recreational and educational programs dominated. Reflecting the rise in the professional of social work, trained social workers began to replace the amateur volunteer staff.

In the 1950s, housing stock in the neighborhood surrounding the settlement house was still poor and much of the area was condemned by the city as part of its urban renewal initiative. The Near West Side Planning Board, sponsored by Hull-House, worked to involve neighborhood residents in planning for a new, revitalized community. However, in 1960 the city of Chicago announced that the area surrounding and including the settlement house had been chosen as the building site for a new Chicago campus for the University of Illinois. While neighborhood residents protested and initiated legal suits to halt the plans, the Hull-House Board chose not to fight the city's decision. Instead, they made plans to vacate the original buildings and decentralize services to various neighborhoods throughout the city.

In 1962, Hull House reorganized as a citywide association and Paul Jans, a social worker who had worked in St. Louis, Detroit, and Philadelphia became the new Executive Director. Jans oversaw the move from the original neighborhood and the establishment of new programs and services. The original charter was expanded to include establishing a "true sense of community" through its various neighborhood centers, providing services to meet the unmet social, economic, cultural, recreational, and physical needs of the neighborhoods, assisting in neighborhood organization and leadership development, and working as partners with neighborhood people to "achieve that type of society where the dignity of each human being is fully respected.

By April 1963, new organizational headquarters had been established in the Lakeview neighborhood on the north side of the city. The Community Fund of Chicago was encouraging mergers by settlements in order to create larger more financially sound neighborhood organizations. Affiliation with Hull House would bestow the name recognition of a nationally known institution, lower administrative costs, and centralize fundraising and publicity departments. Within the first year, four centers affiliated with Hull House Association.

The Henry Booth House and the Parkway Community House were existing centers that served primarily African American communities. Henry Booth House was founded in 1898. In the 1960s, it operated from the Harold L. Ickes Housing Development on the near south side and offered group work services, casework, counseling, community organizing, recreation, and informal educational endeavors. Parkway had been founded in a church basement in 1938 in the West Woodlawn area. In 1965 it moved into a new, modern structure. Its facilities included the Meyer and Raena Hammerman Theatre which offered racial dramas with integrated casts, a large gymnasium, music rooms, a photography darkroom, a ceramics studio, and club meeting rooms. Parkway sponsored an intensive social work program and a Youth Action program that worked with gang-affiliated youth.

Two brand new centers were also established in economically and ethnically diverse neighborhoods. In response to requests from community leaders and the Welfare Council of Metropolitan Chicago, the Jane Addams Center was established in a former American Legion Hall in the Lakeview neighborhood. Puerto Rican, Native American, and Mexican migrants to the city resided in Lakeview and programs such as the Una Puerta Abierta satellite center sought to address their needs. The Uptown Center on the north side served a neighborhood suffering from deteriorating housing stock and a transient population. It was a port of entry neighborhood for migrants from the rural south and for Native Americans and had one of the highest concentrations in the city of elderly residents. In 1966, the Center moved from its original location in a vacant grocery store into a specially constructed building. Programs and activities for children, adults, and seniors expanded.

Later, three additional centers were added. The Abraham Lincoln Center, founded in 1905, joined the Association on the anniversary of Hull-House founder Jane Addams' birth, September 6, 1966. In the 1960s, the almost entirely African American neighborhood population used the center for cultural and recreational activities. The Clarence Darrow Community Center, the newest settlement house in the city, had been founded in 1953. Operating from within the LeClaire Courts public housing development, the Darrow Center joined the Association in 1967. It served approximately 1000 youngsters and adults through athletic programs, arts and crafts classes, clubs, special interest groups, field trips, and a senior citizens program. The DesPlaines Valley Community Center, which also affiliated with the Association in 1967, was located in the heavily industrialized suburb of Summit, Illinois. Founded in 1943 as the DesPlaines Valley Youth Center, it was one of the oldest teen centers in the state. Under Hull House, its program diversified to include all ages in the Summit, Bedford Park, Bridgeview, Justice, and Willow Springs area.

In 1968 the Senior Centers of Metropolitan Chicago joined their facilities to the Association. The Senior Centers had been founded in 1956 to provide social and recreational opportunities for elderly adults. After affiliation with Hull House, Senior Centers took on the administration of all senior citizens programs carried on by the Association.

Each of the various Association centers also sponsored satellite programs that were housed off-site. These satellite programs changed through the years as funding, personnel, and needs changed. While the programs expanded and contracted, the seven original centers along with the Senior Centers formed the core of the Association until the Abraham Lincoln Center disaffiliated in 1970 and the Henry Booth House left in 1985.

Although Jans initially sought to distance the Association from its past, the new centers shared much with the original settlement house. The organization continued to be committed to improving the lives of the poor and encouraged each center to tailor its services to the needs of its immediate community. The centers housed game rooms, pools, gymnasiums, and theaters and sponsored a wide range of programs including swimming, basketball, dance, acting, music, art, and sewing classes. Services in the new centers fell into seven areas: social work services, training for employment, pre-school education, senior citizens services, neighborhood services and citizen involvement, the arts, and recreation.

Several key aspects changed, however. Mostly importantly, residency was abandoned and staff were no longer expected to live within the settlement house or even within the community. A paid social work staff in most centers offered family service and casework counseling dealing with personal and family problems and they assisted with delayed welfare checks or emergency food and funds. Although the staff professionalized, emphasis was placed on working with both existing neighborhood leaders and developing new leadership within the neighborhood in order to address problems of housing, employment, economic security, urban renewal, education, and neighborhood improvement.

Funding also changed. The early settlement had been financed through private donations. After Addams death, funding became an ever-present problem and the settlement cobbled its finances together from a variety of sources. In the 1960s, however, Hull House Association benefited from the boom in new federal programs begun during President Johnson's War on Poverty initiative. By 1965, the Association was able to double its services and add over 150 staff members as a result of over one million dollars from nine federal grants. A participant in VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America), the Association trained volunteers to live and work in disadvantaged neighborhoods. More volunteers were trained at Hull House than at any other agency in the city. The various centers also housed Head Start, Neighborhood Resources, Meals on Wheels, Work Study, and STREETS (Socialization, Training, Recreation, Education, and Employment Technical Services) programs.

The multitude of centers, satellites, and programs made the administration of Hull House more complex. Each of the seven main centers had its own director, board of directors, and administrative staff. Staffs were composed of professional social workers as well as volunteers. The central office also had its own director and board, which held ultimate authority for programs, personnel, and finances, and housed centralized public relations, fund-raising, and financial management departments.

While centers operated independently, the Executive Director set the overall direction for the organization. In the 1960s, programs at the Association reflected Paul Jans dedication to the arts. In 1963, Hull House Association sold Bowen Country Club, the Hull House summer camp located in Waukegan, Illinois and purchased a new 400 acre site near East Troy, Wisconsin. The new Art and Music Camp, designed by William F. Deknatel, a former Hull-House resident, had 8 villages of cabins and contained a concert shell and art, music, dance, sculpture, and woodworking studios. It welcomed campers not only from the Hull House centers but also from throughout the metropolitan area. In summer over 400 campers attended. Bowen Country Club also housed a year-round VISTA training center for teaching marketable skills to inner-city youth, a co-educational recreation camp, and the facilities were available to other agencies and church groups.

Under Jans, Hull House became especially known for its innovative theater program. With Board approval, theatre centers were created in four affiliate centers. Jans recruited Robert Sickinger, an experimental theater director from Philadelphia to oversee the programs in all four centers. The Board gave him complete artistic freedom. A writer's workshop, children's theatre, a short-lived touring company, and a promotional magazine called Intermission were created and Hull House soon gained recognition for its avant-garde productions. The theatre, however, was not self-supporting and along with other Hull House arts programs, created a financial drain on the organization. By 1967, the organization was running a $200,000 deficit and in 1969, the board asked for Jan's resignation. Sickinger resigned the next month. Immediately afterwards, the Board gave control of their theatre facilities and programs to individual centers. Homer C. Bishop, Acting Executive Director, further reduced programs and initiated the sale of Bowen Country Club.

In September 1969, Robert T. Adams became the new Executive Director of the association and the central office moved into new headquarters across from the Jane Addams Center. Important new initiatives included the Uptown Center's Housing Resource Center which organized landlords and tenants committed to maintaining decent, affordable housing and the Constance Morris Center for Battered Women and Children at the DesPlaines Valley Community Center. Hull House also increased its involvement with senior citizens and the Retired Seniors Volunteer Program was funded for the first time. It was later transferred to the Senior Centers of Metropolitan Chicago. The RSVP program matched senior citizens with appropriate volunteer work. By 1974, 1,100 volunteers were active in 148 locations. Decreasing federal funding, however, began to impact programs and services. Funding from the Office of Economic Opportunity ended and the VISTA program was canceled. Hull House employees, seeking better pay and greater decision-making input, formed a union that later affiliated with the UAW.

After Adams resignation in 1979, the organization appointed its first female Executive Director since 1943. Patricia Sharpe had a degree in social work and had worked at the Association in a number of positions since 1968. Sharpe initiated a long-range planning committee to untangle the administrative confusion between the central agency and the programs now operating at twenty locations. She advocated two main tracks for the Association's efforts: programs to help the individual and a concern for social justice and social reform.

Several innovative programs dealt with pressing issues of housing, unemployment increases, drug abuse, teen pregnancy, illiteracy, and violence. In 1983, the Uptown Housing Resource Center became the first community-based, non-profit agency to manage scattered-site public housing. With the help of Hull House, in 1988 residents of the Clarence Darrow Center established the Resident Management Corporation and LeClaire Courts became the first tenant-managed public housing complex in Chicago. Hull House's pioneering unemployment programs focused on job creation and training. The First Aid Care Team trained providers to administer medical services in public housing and the Pre-Building Maintenance Program and the Catering Service at the Clarence Darrow Center gave jobs and training to LeClaire Court residents. Programs to address the problems of women and children included the Child Care Initiative, developed by the Jane Addams Center to train daycare providers, one of the first residential shelters for batter women and children in Illinois, and Uptown Center's efforts towards the organization of the Domestic Violence Court of Cook County in 1984. Neighbors Helping Neighbors was a foster care program dedicated to keeping siblings together and the Adolescent Family Life Project educated teens about pregnancy.

Following a Hull House tradition of investigating urban problems, Sharpe and the Board created a Department of Research and Advocacy, directed by Ann Seng, to conduct research and disseminate information on social issues. The new department focused on employment issues, capital creation for small business, and the feminization of poverty. In the following years, the department issued over ten studies, organized the Jane Addams Conference on Security in the Nuclear Age, and co-convened the Chicago Jobs Coalition (which later became the Chicago Jobs Council). They also established the Chicago Capital Fund, a Community Equity Corporation for Business Development to provide venture capital and management assistance for small Chicago businesses. After publication of their report "Child Support Enforcement," they worked with the Illinois Task Force on Child Support to pass laws providing for payroll deduction for child support.

Sharpe faced several difficulties in implementing her vision for the agency. Grant funds were seldom available for administrative costs and the agency was soon running deficits. Complaints about low staff wages led to Hull-House's first employee strike. Over 200 employees picketed in protest of a Board wage freeze -- an embarrassment for an organization with a long history of labor advocacy. Sharpe also acknowledged that the combination of settlement workers and professional social workers often made for an uneasy mix. She worried that modern social workers received inadequate training in issues of poverty and were unprepared for the realities of inner city neighborhoods.

In 1889, a yearlong celebration of the 100th anniversary of Hull House culminated in a gala Centennial Dinner on September 18. The dinner was the most profitable special event in the history of Hull House. That same year, after 24 years of service including 10 as Executive Director, Sharpe retired.

Gordon Johnson became the new Executive Director (later President and CEO) of Jane Addams Hull House Association in 1990. Johnson was a former director of the Illinois Department of Children and Family services. Under Johnson, the Association publicized its role as "helping one person at a time, one family at a time." With six affiliates and over 35 satellite facilities, the association provided services to more than 225,000 people per year during the 1990s. It continued to experiment with new methods for ameliorating urban problems including the Orr Infant and Family Development Center, the first childcare facility located within a Chicago high school and New Directions, an independent living program for teen wards of the state. Not all efforts were a success. The agency suffered a spectacularly public embarrassment when it partnered with talk show host Oprah Winfrey in a program designed to move 100 families out of public housing. Two years later, the program had spent $1.3 million but served only 7 families.

In 2005, Jane Addams Hull House Association consisted of three community centers (LeClaire-Hearst Community Center, Parkway Community House, and the Uptown Center) and many satellite programs. The central office had moved to 118 North Clinton Street in 1984, and in 2005 was housed at 10 S. Riverside Plaza.

Scope and Contents

This collection primarily contains materials generated or collected by the central office of Hull House Association. It documents the history, leadership, activities, and mission of Hull House Association and its relationship to several of its affiliates. Material relating to the affiliates was either collected from the agencies by Hull House or generated by the central office. Administrative records from the affiliates themselves are only available for two centers: the Jane Addams Center and Uptown Center. The materials in the collection span the years from 1889 to 1999 but the bulk of the collection is from approximately 1963 to 1979. The files contain a wide variety of materials including minutes, correspondence, memos, attendance lists, reports, manuals, legal papers, contracts, deeds, leases, incorporation papers, charts, directories, budgets, questionnaires, forms, worksheets, photographs, booklets, articles, invitations, programs, proposals, newspaper clippings, directories, newsletters, note cards, fliers, press releases, speeches, site reports, field work notes, pamphlets, plaques, photographs, films, and a printing block.

The materials come from several accessions spanning the years 1973 to 1999. In 2004-2005, the various accessions were combined and the collection was rearranged. The collection has been divided into nine series. The Administrative Files, Financial Records, Programs, Public Relations Files, Personnel Files, Affiliated Organizations, and Affiliated Centers series contain materials from the central office of Hull House Association. Series VIII and Series IX contain records donated by the Jane Addams Center and the Uptown Center. Some personnel files were discarded.

Special Collections recognizes that the confidential nature of certain types of records must be preserved. Files #442, 443, 992, 993 and 1052 are restricted. Researchers must make an application to the Special Collections Librarian to view these files and sign a written confidentiality statement in which the researcher agrees to refrain from making any public or private disclosure of information contained in these records which would identify any person mentioned as a subject. Photocopying is not allowed in restricted files. Case files in boxes 102, 174-183 and tenant interviews in boxes 151-166 are closed and unavailable to researchers until 2030.

Detailed Description/Box and Folder Listing