Jane Addams speaks to visitors to the Hull House in 1935.

Jane Addams

• September 6, 1860- Mary 21, 1935

• Founder of the Settlement House Movement

• First American woman to win the Noble Peace Prize (1931)

• Hull House in Chicago in 1889 to aid immigrants

• Fought to create child labor laws

• Author of 11 books

• Founder of the Women's Peace Party

The Hull House

 In 1889, Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr created the Hull House in Chicago, which was the first settlement house in the United States. The Hull House was created with the goal of educating women to share knowledge, from basic skills to arts and literature with poorer people.  

Click here for Jane Addams' Biography from the Noble Prize.org.

Click here for her obituary: Jane Addams A Foe of War and Need, The New York Times, May 22, 1935.

Click here for a timeline of Addams' life

Online Copies of Jane Addams Writings

 Jane Addams House Tour 

The House That Jane Built:  A Story about Jane Addams.  Tanya Lee Stone.  Henry Holt & Co., 2015

Hull House Women's Club building on Polk Street, 1905

• Excerpts from Twenty Years at Hull House (1910) as well as short sources by Jacob Riis, John Spargo and Lincoln Steffens, among others.

• Click here for Hull House Maps and Papers. Works contributed by various authors, including Jane Addams.

  Two authors discuss Jane Addams life and work in June 2006 at the C-Span Video Library.

How Jane Addams Changed the World 

Jane Addams Hull-House Museum.

See also Urban Experience in Chicago: Hull-House and its Neighborhoods, 1889-1963from the University of Illinois at Chicago.