{"id":8106,"date":"2016-07-02T10:20:57","date_gmt":"2016-07-02T15:20:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/maxwellhalsted.publish.uic.edu\/?page_id=8106"},"modified":"2020-11-28T14:53:40","modified_gmt":"2020-11-28T20:53:40","slug":"enlightened-reformer","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/maxwellhalsted.uic.edu\/home\/enlightened-reformer\/","title":{"rendered":"HULL-HOUSE “OASIS” IN A SLUM"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nWhen Charles Hull stood on the steps of his new mansion at Polk and\u00a0Harrison streets, he took in a view of the city from what was a\u00a0suburban fringe of Chicago. The vast acres to the east stood unoccupied\u00a0with only the faint visages of streets outlined on the prairie. Even Halsted\u00a0Street at his doorstep was unpaved and minimally traveled.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0noise, congestion and smells of the commercial district to the north and the\u00a0lumber district to the south were far removed. Here, on the steps of his\u00a0mansion, he thought to watch his Chicago grow. Looking at an 1855 map of his\u00a0city, Hull had selected an area devoid of neighbors. The large blocks of land were not divided and subdivided like those closer to the heart of the city. Here, he was certain, others would follow in his footsteps. All in all, it seemed the perfect site for his new brick mansion and he would profit from the land boom.<\/p>\n

Charles Hull would soon have neighbors, but not the kind he\u00a0had envisioned. He did not know that the nature of the neighborhood\u00a0would change almost overnight. In pre-Fire Chicago, the rich lived\u00a0side by side with ‘middling’ folk and neither would ever be very far from\u00a0the poor.<\/p>\n

The population of Chicago in 1855 was 31, 783 with 6000 Irish, 5000\u00a0Germans, 2000 English, 1000 Scotch and 500 from Southern Europe, a combined 22% from abroad. By\u00a01860, the population had expanded to 109,206 with a foreign-born element of\u00a055,000 or 50%. The majority of these newcomers were living in Charles Hull’s\u00a0front yard. European immigrants began to arrive in substantial numbers\u00a0during the late 1850s. On one day alone in 1857, over 3400 arrived from\u00a0New York. Some passed further on to the western prairie, but many remained, found jobs and settled into warrens and patches extending\u00a0westward across the unoccupied land, right up to Charles Hull’s doorstep.<\/p>\n

By the time of the Civil War in 1861, the Near West Side was a continually\u00a0changing neighborhood of unemployed, working poor and a rapidly\u00a0emerging, upward-bound middle class. Life in the nineteenth century was precarious, fragile even for the well-to-do. Hull’s wife died in 1860, and his son died in the cholera epidemic in 1866. The Hulls were soon gone from the neighborhood. In the 1870s the Mansion became a home for the elderly run \u00a0by the Little Sisters of the Poor. In the 1880s it became\u00a0a boarding house and warehouse\u00a0when\u00a0Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr first rented it in 1889. \u00a0bjb<\/p>\n

INTRODUCTION: AN EVENT CALLED HULL-HOUSE<\/h3>\n

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