In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the settlement houses of Chicago led the nation in addressing problems of urbanization, immigration, and industrialization. While many people are familiar with Chicago's most famous settlement house, Hull-House, few are aware of the creative efforts of the other settlement houses located in Illinois. UIC's Special Collections & University Archives holds material not just on Hull-House, but on many other settlement houses throughout the city.  Here are the settlement house collections with digitized materials:

Bethlehem Howell Neighborhood Center collection

Bethlehem Center and Howell House were church-related neighborhood houses serving the Pilsen area on the Near West Side. They provided religious, social services, and personal welfare assistance to an immigrant community composed predominantly of Bohemians, Poles, and Czechs. The two centers cooperated throughout their history, merging in 1961 as the Neighborhood Service Organization. The Neighborhood Service Organization, popularly known as Casa Aztlan, continues to serve the Pilsen area. 

View: Bethlehem Howell Neighborhood Center collection

Image: Boys playing checkers at camp

Firman House records

Firman settlement house began as a Congregational Church and later a mission on the Near West Side of Chicago. In 1912, the mission was renamed Firman House in honor of Butler Winfield Firman, who had led the consolidation of several churches into the Ewing Street Congregational Church. During its first 36 years, the agency remained in the vicinity of Ashland Avenue and Harrison Street, where it provided services for the Mexican community. In 1948, Firman House came under full sponsorship of the Presbytery of Chicago and moved to 53rd Street to serve the African American population. The facilities included clubrooms, a woodworking shop, a dining hall, and a recreation room. The settlement sponsored teen clubs, parties, a nursery school, mother's clubs, and a Family Night Club. During the 1950s and 1960s, Firman House moved its services to the Robert Taylor Homes. The agency hosted several Head Start Programs and began a preschool for neighborhood residents in the early 1960s. It also offered the only library in the neighborhood. To better reflect its broad scope of services, the agency changed its name to Firman Community Services, Inc., in 1969. Today, Firman Community Services provides neighborhood-based social services at several Chicago locations.

View: Firman House Records

Image: Announcement for pancake dinner, Firman House
FIRR_0005_0121_002

Henry Booth House records

The Henry Booth House was established in Chicago in 1898 by the Ethical Humanist Society and is named after the society's first president, Judge Henry Booth. Members of the Ethical Humanist Society believed in the dignity and worth of all people and in a universal morality based on the common experience of all humans. The stated goals of the Henry Booth House founders were to improve the living conditions in the surrounding neighborhood, promote good citizenship, strengthen family life, promote a sense of community, and to enrich the lives of the House's staff. Prior to 1949, the House served a diverse mix of Irish, German, Czech, Russian, Lithuanian, Jewish, Polish, and Italian immigrants. Following World War II, the neighborhood surrounding Henry Booth House, located at West 14th Place, was almost entirely composed of African Americans. In 1955, at the request of the Chicago Housing Authority, the Henry Booth House relocated to 2328 and 2910 South Dearborn Street, where it could better serve residents of public housing units. Currently, the Henry Booth House receives funding from the Chicago Housing Authority and participates in several federally funded programs seeking to improve the education, health, and general living conditions of community residents on Chicago's Near South side.

View: Henry Booth House records

Image: Women in folk costumes dancing on stage

Hull-House Association records

In 1963, Hull-House, the world-famous social settlement house founded by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr, moved from its original location in the Near West Side of Chicago and decentralized its services. The newly restructured Hull House Association became the administrative entity overseeing a confederation of affiliated organizations that included former settlement houses, newly created community centers, and a myriad of program hosted in Hull House satellites. This collection primarily contains materials generated or collected by the central office of Hull House Association. It documents the history, leadership, activities, and mission of Hull House Association and its relationship to several of its affiliates.

View: Hull-House Association Records

Image:  Hull House Association, Annual Report, 1996

Hull-House Collection

Hull-House, founded in 1889 by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr, was the first social settlement in Chicago. The settlement was incorporated in March, 1895, with a stated purpose to "provide a center for higher civic and social life, to initiate and maintain educational and philanthropic enterprises, and to investigate and improve the conditions in the industrial districts of Chicago." From 1889 to 1963, Hull-House operated a wide-ranging program from its complex of buildings at 800 S. Halsted St. The digital collection includes full text yearbooks, annual reports and bulletins published by Hull-House from 1896 to 1999.

View: Hull-House Collection

Image: Hull-House Yearbook cover, 1940

Hull-House Photograph collection

Inspired by London's Toynbee Hall settlement, Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr founded Hull-House in 1889 on Chicago's Near West Side. Hull-House became one of the most important centers for social reform and certainly the best-known settlement house in the United States. Hull-House attracted several notable residents, including Edith and Grace Abbott, Sophonisba Breckenridge, Alice Hamilton, Charlotte Perkins, Mary McDowell, Florence Kelley, Robert Morss Lovett, and Gerard Swope. The settlement had an extensive program of activities that included a nursery, kindergarten, music school, art school, theater program, athletics program, and lectures on a wide variety of topics delivered by John Dewey, Clarence Darrow, and Paul Kellogg, among others. A central aspect of Hull-House was its dedication to maintaining the cultures of Chicago's vibrant immigrant communities while introducing new residents to life in America. Ethnic theater, folk dancing, and a museum showcasing ethnic crafts celebrated ethnic culture while English and citizenship classes provided practical skills for immigrants' new lives.

Image: Woman playing guitar at a Hull-House Christmas party at Jane Addams Center

Hull-House became best known for the contributions of its residents towards social reform and the development of social work as a profession. Members of Hull-House, for instance, played central roles in the passage of the 1893 Illinois Factory Act, the 1903 foundation of the Women's Trade Union League, as well as the creation of the National Federation of Settlements in 1911. In 1931, Jane Addams won the Nobel Peace Prize for her pacifist activities during World War I. She was the first American woman to receive this honor. In addition, many Hull-House luminaries assumed key positions in state and federal agencies and were highly influential in shaping state and national policy in such areas as labor, immigration, and women's rights. After the death of Addams in 1935, Hull-House continued to function on the Near West Side, adjusting its programs to accommodate a changing neighborhood. In 1963, the settlement house moved to make way for a new Chicago campus for the University of Illinois. Hull-House Association continues to exist today as several neighborhood centers that still address the needs of their neighborhoods.

View: Hull-House Photograph collection

Hyde Park Neighborhood Club records

The Hyde Park Neighborhood Club (HPNC) was founded in 1909 (or 1911, sources differ) by a group of women from the Hyde Park area. Like many settlement houses, it moved a number of times. After 1951, HPNC maintained its primary building at 5480 S. Kenwood Avenue, where a number of services were provided, including dancing, cooking, arts and crafts, woodworking, and a kindergarten. A nearby gymnasium was used for sports. Over the years, the HPNC expanded to provide job placement services, sports programs, adult education classes, senior citizens' programs, and "tot lot" programs for smaller children. It published a newspaper; provided workshops, club rooms, social activities, and youth counseling; and sponsored a children's summer camp in Palatine, Illinois, called Camp Reinberg. The HPNC also contributed to children's education, primarily through its Head Start program. The HPNC continues to operate, offering neighborhood children a safe place to play and providing residents with a health clinic, computer lab, and an Adult Day Center for local seniors.

View: Hyde Park Neighborhood Club records

Image: Group of children learning woodworking from an instructor

Marcy-Newberry Association records

The Marcy-Newberry Association was formed from the Marcy Center and the Newberry Avenue Center. The Association is a Methodist-supported social service center with a long history of providing services to the residents of the Near West and West Sides of Chicago. In 1882, Elizabeth Smith Marcy founded the Rock River Conference Woman's Home Missionary Society. Its first project, the Elizabeth Marcy Industrial Home, was founded in 1896 and consisted of a three-story mission in the Bohemian neighborhood on Chicago's Near West Side. Marcy Home offered a kindergarten, manual training, Sunday school, choral training, an employment bureau, and classes on social purity and temperance. A dispensary staffed by volunteer doctors, nurses, and specialists, handled 3,500 to 7,500 patients annually. In 1912, Anna Heistad became superintendent of Marcy Home. She expanded the mission's proselytizing efforts, created a "Prayer Gang" of 50 Jewish youths, a Friday night gospel service, a Queen Esther Circle, and a Vacation Bible School. In the 1920s, Jewish residents from the Maxwell Street area began to move west to Lawndale. In 1930, Marcy Center followed and opened a new building to serve their new neighborhood.

Image: Doctor giving eye test to an older man

In 1935, the Women's Union of First Methodist Church in Evanston opened Newberry Avenue Center in the original Marcy Center building in the Maxwell Street area. The newly renamed center provided a nursery school, a day camp, and classes in cooking, sewing, gymnastics, and handicrafts. In 1969, the Newberry Avenue Center and the Marcy Center merged to become the Marcy-Newberry Association. It is still associated with the Methodist Church. The Association has 15 program sites and is supported by government funds, grants, and the donations of private corporations and individuals.

View Marcy-Newberry Association records

Off-the-Street Club records

The Off-The-Street Club is Chicago's oldest boys and girls club and is located on Chicago's West Side. Originally named "Juniors," the Off-The-Street Club was founded by John McMurray in 1898 as a safe place for unsupervised children to play. The club was funded in its early years by the Chicago Advertising Club. Children who joined the Off-The-Street Club were invited to enroll in a variety of smaller clubs and were allowed use of the club's recreation and education programs and facilities. During the summer, they could also visit the club's Mark Twain Adventure Camp near Wheaton, Illinois. Building character was a primary focus of activities. Under the direction of "Colonel" Auguste Mathieu, who was originally a Boy Scout leader, the club moved to a new location on Van Buren Street and later to Jackson Boulevard. In 1955, the club moved to the West Garfield Park community, where it currently operates.

View: Off-the-Street Club records

Image: Off-The-Street-Club Summer Season flyer

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