Hull-House Highlights

"In the Butler Gallery"
Watercolor rendering of the Butler building (left) and the Hull-House mansion, ca. 1891.

A bit of Venetian architecture on South Halsted street! Why, one would not be more surprised to see a gondolier guiding his graceful craft over the ornate waters of the Chicago River.

Yet here it is in a façade that must seem reminiscent to the Italian residents of the vicinity, and that looks strange enough beside the pillared porch of Hull House. “Butler Gallery” will soon be on the plate by the doorway, and June 10 the new building will be formally opened. It is a two-story structure of brick, two colors, buff and red, being used in its construction. The entrance is at the northeast corner and one passes through a small vestibule into the reading-room, a large apartment—31 x 45 feet—occupying the entire ground floor. This reading-room draws its support from four different sources. In the first place the ground on which the building stands is the property of Miss Helen Culver, who gives it rent free to the projectors of Hull House. The building itself has been erected by Edward B. Butler, and “Hull House” will be responsible for its heating, lighting, and care. On account of this unusual aid the Public Library can afford to make this particular branch of the institution attractive, and so the furniture has been specially designed for the room, and $1,500 worth of reference books will be placed on its shelves. The furniture will be of light oak, which will harmonize well with the pale lemon shades of the wainscoting, walls, and ceiling. The desk, counter, and file case for periodicals will occupy one side of the room, and there will also be two large bookcases and a number of racks for newspapers. Tables and chairs to accommodate fifty readers will be furnished, and when completed there will not be a more attractive reading-room in the city.

The second floor is divided into two apartments. The small one occupies the rear of the building and will be the “studio,” devoted to the use of the art classes which are now conducted at Hull House. The large front room will be a permanent class and lecture room and will also be used for loan exhibits at least twice a year, in June and September, when some of the best exhibits in the city will be placed on view. In these rooms a very high wainscoting extends nearly to the ceiling and the whole interior will be painted the conventional dark red of the picture gallery, only in this case the shade will be somewhat lighter, for most of the visitors will judge the exhibits by gaslight. In such busy places as South Halsted street art sleeps in the daytime and does not dispute the field with industry.

High, diamond-paned windows give an excellent light to these airy rooms, and a large closet off the studio will receive the easels and working materials on occasions when it is desired to throw the two rooms together. This can be easily done, as great doors of the same height and construction as the wainscoting can be swung back, virtually transforming the second floor into one large apartment. Chests of drawers, shelves full of casts, and the miscellaneous studies of the pupils will give the artistic working-tone which is a studio’s dearest prerogative.

The northwest corner of the Butler Gallery rubs elbows, as it were, with sedate old Hull House, and an avenue of direct communication is afforded by a door which opens from the new reading-room upon the wide verandah of the old mansion. This is eminently proper, for Butler Hall is to be the field for the development of the pet project of Hull House.

University Extension.

The university extension movement, which for the last ten years has been in successful operation in England, will soon be so well known in Chicago as to need no explanation. President Harper has engaged Prof. Richard G. Moulton to take charge of the university extension in connection with the new college, and other prominent names are being added to the history of the work in Chicago. The object of the movement is to extend higher education to all who desire it and to inspire the desire where it does not exist.

One Mr. Pope some years ago ventured the assertion that—
A little learning is a dangerous thing.
Unlike most “danger” warnings this one is supplemented by a piece of advice:
Drink deep from the Pierian spring.
Custom would seem to have added, “if you find a chance to do so at school or college.” One would think that the acquirement of learning was permissible only under certain circumstances; that the same unwritten law which dictates “roast turkey and cranberry sauce,” “roast pork and apple sauce,” had issued a fat coupling “attendance at school and education”—if you cannot have one you must go without the other; if you do not secure your education during the period currently spoken of as the “school age,” you may remedy the defect in the next world but you never will in this. However, the originators of university extension believed in none of these things. They thought that education is for every man and woman, and that it is not a matter of a limited period, but of a lifetime. In extending university education to the world two things are insisted upon—thoroughness of method and elasticity of curriculum. A student may take only one “unit” of the sum total of the work in a unit, being a three-months’ course in a particular branch; but this portion must be done with a thoroughness exceeding even that of the regular universities. Years may be given to the completion of an entire course, but no incompetent work is permitted. There is no distinction of class or of age in the clientele, as it were, of university extension. The work is intended for the most cultivated as well as the least educated, for the young and the old. Its elements are lectures, class, syllabus, weekly exercises, examinations, and certificates. Of the miscellaneous audience which attends the lectures a portion only will belong to the classes; and of this membership in the classes a fraction will take the examinations. Thus it is a survival of the fittest, each taking as deep a draught from “the Pierian spring” as inclination or need prescribes, but with the open possibility of “increasing the does.” The certificates are given upon a combination of the weekly exercises and the examination at the end, a praiseworthy example, perhaps, for the schools.

A series of lessons and classes, established with the same end in view, has been carried on for a year at the Hull House under the name of “College Extension.” These classes have been conducted for the most part by graduates of colleges and universities, and some of the lectures have been given by university professors. As yet, however, there has been no formal connection with any university or with the university extension movement, though such connection is anticipated. Hull House is to be made a center for one or more university extension lectures as soon as the committee is prepared to begin work in Chicago.

Classes and Lectures Are Distinct.

In the College Extension Courses at Hull House there has been hitherto (with a few exceptions) no connection between classes and lectures, though excellence in each has been aimed at. This connection will be strictly adhered to in the ensuing courses beginning next September. During the last year 150 students have been enrolled in the following college extension classes, and the work accomplished has been surprisingly satisfactory: History of art, mathematics, Latin, English literature, Shakspeare [sic], English history, book-keeping, drawing, Roman history, rhetoric, zoology, German, French, and Italian.

A delightful feature of the college extension work of Hull House will be the summer school, which is to be held at Rockford Seminary, Rockford, Ill. “Voracious learning” never selected a more alluring citadel than this charming place. The transition from the clamor and dirt of the city to the shady quiet and picturesque corners of Rockford would of itself be a sufficient motive for the change. But when reading parties, song recitals, the study of birds and botany, sketching classes, and other attractive items are added, what wonder that every member of the college extension work who finds it possible will attend the summer school from July 1 to July 30. Four railroads have made a rate of $2.50 for the round trip, and board will be furnished at the rate of $2 per week. Teachers and students are expected to take care of their own rooms and to give an hour a day to the general work of the house. The branches of study and training will be as follows:
Birds—Outdoor study, Florence A. Merriam (B. A. Smith College).
Botany—Outdoor study, Mrs. M. A. Collier.
Gymnastics—In Seminary Gymnasium, Miss Edith Sherman (from Hemenway Gymnasium, Harvard).
Lessons in Lawn Tennis—Miss Sherman.
German Conversation—Fräulein Hannig.
Reading Party—Charles Lamb, Elizabeth Eastman (B. A. Smith College).
English Grammar—Miss Eastman.
Reading Party—Browning, Ruskin, Miss Starr.
Reading Party—Emerson, Miss Dow.
Singing—Miss Eleanor Smith.
Reading Party—Modern novelists, Anna Lathrop (B. A. Vassar College).
English Composition—Miss Lathrop.
Reading Party—Victor Hugo (“Les Miserables”), Jane Adams [sic] (B. A. Rockford Seminary).
Needlework—German method, Fräulein Hannig.
Sketching—Miss Conant.
Eight recitals in song will be given by Miss Eleanor Smith, and there will be seven lectures by Prof. E. S. Bastin, the Rev. Jenkin Lloyd Jones, Dr. F. H. Kimbal, Ellen Gates Starr, and Mrs. M. H. Wilmarth.

The social and educational work which has had Hull House for its center has grown beyond the anticipation of those who have been interested in it. Butler Gallery and the summer school are its latest, as its most important branches, and June 10, which will witness the dedication of the new building, will be a red-letter day for the friends of Hull House.

“In the Butler Gallery: Venetian Architecture on South Halsted Street,” Chicago Tribune (May 31, 1891): 38.

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