Jane Addams, social work's founding mother, moved into the old Hull House in Chicago on Sept. 18, 1889. She and Ellen Gates Starr, her roommate from Rockford College, had rented the house on Halsted Street for $60 a month. Their dream: to serve the neighborhood.
Very soon they started a kindergarten and a day care center for working mothers. In 1891, an art gallery was added. In 1893, a coffee house and theater/gym were added. (Photo shows coffee house in 1905.) The Hull House complex grew until it covered more than a square block.
That first night was pretty exciting, Addams recalled later. She remembered that not only did they forget to lock the door, they forgot to even close it.
Hull House is sometimes referred to as a mansion. It does have pillars out front, but it is really quite small -- smaller than the average suburban tract home. There are two rooms and a kitchen downstairs; and two rooms upstairs. In Addams' time the Hull House work was downstairs; Starr and Addams had their rooms upstairs.
The original Hull House is still there; you can tour it and see exhibits of the community work. But most of the other buildings which were once part of the settlement house were torn down in the 1980s to make room for the University of Illinois at Chicago.