Not Just a Place to Play in Near West Side
West Side
These photographs from the Hull-House Photograph Collection show children playing on a playground outside the Mary Crane Nursery at Hull-House, the Chicago settlement house founded by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Hull-House provided social and educational initiatives to the Near West Side community, including neighborhood children. Founders Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr considered recreation and play to be important to the physical and mental health of children, especially in the dense urban environment. Alongside the Mary Crane Nursery School, Hull-House created the first public playground in Chicago. It opened on May Day of 1893 in an open lot on Polk Street. The facility advanced the American Playground Movement, inspiring cities to provide more safe spaces for children and adults to exercise and play.
These images are from the Hull-House Photograph Collection at the University of Illinois Chicago Special Collections and University Archives, which also contains the records of Hull-House and many of its affiliated organizations that served children in the city's Near West Side, including the Mary Crane League records and the Juvenile Protective Association records.
