Jane Adams Settlement House

Chapter 20: Section 3

City Life

Urban Problems

• shortages of affordable housing forced many poor families to squeeze into tiny tenement apartments.

• Jacob Riis: Journalist and photographer that became famous for exposing the horrible living conditions in New York City tenements.

Urban Problems

• Sanitation problems: no good system for collecting trash, so garbage piled up outside of apartment buildings.

• Unsafe tenements: landlords were not required to fix their tenements or maintain safety standards.

Tenements Life

• Overcrowding/disease

• Unsafe buildings

• Unsanitary Conditions/High Child Deatah Rate

• No Running Water/Fire

• Crime

Urban Problems

• Air pollution caused by oil refineries, steel mills, and other factories.

• City help: new sewage and water purification systems improved city sanitation.

• City help: full-time firefighters and police officers were hired.

Improving City Life

• Jacob Riis - How the Other Half Lives shocked the world with pictures of tenement life.

• Lawrence Veiller: Helped lead the effort in improving conditions in tenements.

• Charity Organization Society (COS) sponsored an exhibit of photographs and maps graphically showing the conditions of New York tenements.

Improving City Life

• 1901: New York State Tenement Act required building to have better ventilation and running water.

• Private organizations aided the poor.

• Settlement houses - neighborhood center in poor areas that offered education, recreation, and social activities.

Improving City Life

• 1886: Charles B. Stover and Stanton Coit established the first settlement house in the United States, the Neighborhood Guild in the Lower East side of New York City.

• 1889: Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr moved into a run-down building in a poor Chicago neighborhood and turned it into Hull House, the most famous settlement house of the period.

Hull House in Chicago

Hull House

• Focused on serving immigrant families serving over 2,000 a week providing English classes, day care, cooking and sewing classes.

• Families could participate in art classes, plays and sports.

Hull House

• Florence Kelley: important reformer at Hull House.

• Florence Kelley visited sweatshops and wrote about the problems which prompted lawmakers to take action.

• Florence Kelley became the state's chief inspector and helped enforce laws.

Hull House

• Due to the success of the Hull House settlement houses spread to other cities.

• Settlement houses provided relief to immigrants into the early 1900s.

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