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Varieties of Cultural Experience in Jane Addams' Chicago

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Helen L. Horowitz
Helen L. Horowitz*
Affiliation:
Scripps College, Claremont, California
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Extract

WHEN Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr established their home in the Hull mansion on Halsted Street in Chicago in 1889, they knew only that they wanted to connect up to the life of their time by living within the neighborhood of the immigrant poor. Their residence grew gradually into Hull-House, a pioneer social settlement, which served as a model to others seeking solutions to the social question at the turn of the century. What is often lost sight of is that Hull-House developed in Chicago as a response, in part, to its specific local currents. Restored to its setting, the Hull-House experience takes on a new and clearer meaning.

Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , Spring 1974 , pp. 69 - 86
Copyright
Copyright © 1973 by New York University 

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References

Notes

1. For full and documented discussion see Horowitz, Helen L., “Culture and the City: Cultural Philanthropy in Chicago, 1890–1917” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1969), especially Chapters 1–4. An expanded version has been prepared for publication.Google Scholar

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3. Goodspeed, Thomas Wakefield, “Charles Lawrence Hutchinson,” University Record 11 (1925): 61. Hutchinson was an important contributor and active member of the board of directors of the University of Chicago Settlement (Material re: settlement, McDowell papers, Chicago Historical Society, Chicago, Ill.).Google Scholar

4. Hull House Bulletin 3, no. 6 (October 1898), copy in Chicago Historical Society, Chicago, Ill.; McCaul, Robert L., “Dewey's Chicago,” The School Review 67 (1959): 277.Google Scholar

5. Christopher Lasch's discussions of Jane Addams have shaped my thinking about her, especially his introduction to her life and thought and his selection of her writings, The Social Thought of Jane Addams (Indianapolis, 1965). See also his The New Radicalism in America, 1889–1963: The Intellectual as a Social Type (New York, 1965), pp. 3–37. There is now a fine intellectual biography of Jane Addams: Farrell, John C., Beloved Lady: A History of Jane Addams' Ideas on Reform and Peace (Baltimore, 1967). Material on Miss Addams's life is based on these sources, unless otherwise noted. The recent study by Levine, Daniel, Jane Addams and the Liberal Tradition (Madison, 1971), focuses on the subject's political and social thought. It does include a discussion of Miss Addams's views on children and education, pp. 89–110. Google Scholar

6. Addams to Ellen Gates Starr, 7 February 1886, in Lasch, , ed. Social Thought of Jane Addams, p. 5.Google Scholar

7. Farrell, , Beloved Lady pp. 44–52; Addams, Jane, Twenty Years at Hull-House (New York, 1911), pp. 81–88. Google Scholar

8. Addams, , Twenty Years, p. 101. Davis, Allen and McCree, Mary Lynn, eds., Eighty Years at Hull-House (Chicago, 1969), a splendid collection of documents relating to Hull-House, with useful material and notes, has an informative discussion “Beginnings,” pp. 15–23, on the early years. Google Scholar

9. Addams, Jane, “The Art-Work Done by Hull-House, Chicago,” Forum 19 (1895): 614–15.Google Scholar

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11. Ibid., p. 4.Google Scholar

12. Horowitz, , “Culture and the City,” Chapter 4.Google Scholar

13. See photographs in Hull House Maps and Papers (New York, 1895).Google Scholar

14. Addams, Jane, “The Objective Value of a Social Settlement,” in Philanthropy and Social Progress, pp. 45–46.Google Scholar

15. Hull-House Yearbook, 1 May 1910, copy in Chicago Historical Society, Chicago, Ill. While Miss Addams generally spoke of the city as a whole rather than the neighborhood, other settlement house reformers, such as Graham Taylor, found in the neighborhood a key concept.Google Scholar

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17. “Hull House: A Social Settlement,” p. 225.Google Scholar

18. Addams, , “Art-Work Done by Hull-House,” 614–17.Google Scholar

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21. Addams, , “Subjective Necessity for Social Settlements,” p. 21. Farrell, , Beloved Lady, considers Jane Addams's changing conceptions of culture in terms of the intellectual influences impinging upon her as well as her experiences at Hull-House (pp. 80–108). Google Scholar

22. Addams, , “Objective Value of a Social Settlement,” p. 35.Google Scholar

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24. Addams, , “The Art-Work Done by Hull-House,” 615.Google Scholar

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30. Addams, , “Function of the Social Settlement,” 332.Google Scholar

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32. Ibid., p. 178.Google Scholar

33. Ibid. Google Scholar

34. Ibid., p. 179.Google Scholar

35. Davis, and McCree, , eds., Eighty Years, p. 83.Google Scholar

36. “First Report of a Labor Museum at Hull House,” pamphlet, Chicago Historical Society, Chicago, Ill.; Addams, , Twenty Years, pp. 235–46.Google Scholar

37. Addams, Jane, Democracy and Social Ethics (New York, 1902), pp. 209–14.Google Scholar

38. Addams, , Twenty Years, p. 242.Google Scholar

39. Addams, , Democracy and Social Ethics, p. 190.Google Scholar

40. Hull House Yearbook, 1 May 1910, pp. 50–51, copy in Chicago Historical Society, Chicago, Ill. Google Scholar

41. See, for one exposition of his views, Dewey, John, Democracy and Education (New York, 1916).Google Scholar

42. Davis, , Spearheads for Reform, p. 58.Google Scholar

43. Dewey, John, Lectures in the Philosophy of Education, 1899, ed. with intro. Archambault, Reginald D. (New York, 1966), pp. 299–300.Google Scholar

44. Dewey, , Democracy and Education, p. 88.Google Scholar

45. Dewey, John, “Culture and Industry in Education,” 1906, reprinted in Teachers College Bulletin, series 10, number 10 (1 March 1919): 18.Google Scholar

46. Dewey, , Democracy and Education, p. 279.Google Scholar

47. Dewey, John, The School and Society (Chicago, 1899), p. 102.Google Scholar

48. Addams, , “The Objective Value of a Social Settlement,” p. 35.Google Scholar

49. Addams, Jane, The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets (New York, 1909). Quote from p. 20.Google Scholar

50. Ibid., p. 20.Google Scholar

51. Ibid., p. 90.Google Scholar

52. Ibid., pp. 96–101.Google Scholar

53. Ibid., p. 103; Farrell, , Beloved Lady, pp. 104–19, first led me to Jane Addams's reappreciation of culture.Google Scholar

54. Halsey, Elizabeth, The Development of Public Recreation in Metropolitan Chicago ([Chicago:] Chicago Recreation Commission, 1940), p. 17.Google Scholar

55. Davis, , Spearheads for Reform, pp. 61–63.Google Scholar

56. Horowitz, , “Culture and the City,” Chapter 6.Google Scholar

57. Ibid., Chapter 8.Google Scholar

58. Dewey, John, “An Undemocratic Proposal,” Vocational Education 2 (May 1913): 374–77. Quotes from pp. 376, 375.Google Scholar

59. Davis, and McCree, , eds., Eighty Years, pp. 107–8.Google Scholar

60. Allen Davis emphasizes this shift, although he attributes it to a realization on the reformers' part that their educational program was impractical (Spearheads for Reform, pp. 49–58).Google Scholar

61. Addams, , Democracy and Social Ethics, p. 153.Google Scholar

62. Ibid., p. 154.Google Scholar

63. Ibid., pp. 163–64.Google Scholar

64. Addams, Jane, “Opening of the Exhibit,” The Child in the City (Chicago: The Blakely printing co., 1911), pp. 4–5.Google Scholar

65. Addams, , Democracy and Social Ethics, p. 165.Google Scholar

66. Ibid., pp. 222–23.Google Scholar

67. Wade, Louise C., “The Heritage from Chicago's Early Settlement Houses,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 60 (1967): 430.Google Scholar

68. Hutchinson to Addams, 5 August 1912, Addams papers, Swarthmore Peace Collection, Swarthmore, Pa. Google Scholar

69. Frances Hutchinson to Addams, 2 December 1910, Addams papers, Swarthmore Peace Collection, Swarthmore, Pa. Google Scholar