Hull House, Settlement house in Near West Side, Chicago, United States.
Hull House is a historic Italianate-style mansion in the Near West Side neighborhood of Chicago that now operates as a social history museum. The preserved main building displays exhibition rooms filled with photographs, documents, and everyday objects from the era of mass immigration, while surrounding spaces recreate the feeling of the original rooms.
Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr founded the center in 1889 after visiting a similar initiative in London, creating the first American social settlement project. Over the following decades, twelve additional buildings were added to the original house, though most were demolished starting in the 1960s.
The name comes from Charles Jerald Hull, a mid-19th-century real estate owner whose house became the center of the complex. Former resident rooms and shared kitchens are still furnished with simple tables and cooking equipment, making it easy to imagine how daily life unfolded there.
The museum sits on South Halsted Street near the University of Illinois campus and is accessible by public transport. A walk through the rooms takes about an hour and suits visitors interested in social reform and urban development.
The rooms hosted music performances and theater evenings where local residents took part. The site also held a public bathhouse, one of the first of its kind in Chicago, drawing hundreds of visitors each day.
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