About This School

Biography Information

Laura Jane Addams, born on September 6, 1860 in Cedarville, Illinois, the eighth of nine children, grew up to be known as Jane Addams. Her father, John Huy Addams, a businessman and Illinois state senator, was a friend of Abraham Lincoln. Her mother, Sarah Weber Addams, died when Jane was two. Jane was a brilliant student, but dropped out of medical school because of poor health.

In 1889 Jane Addams and Ellen Gate Starr founded Hull House at Polk and Halsted, a community resource that provided child care, an employment bureau, citizenship classes and recreational activities. A portion of the original complex of buildings is now a museum on the University of Illinois at Chicago Campus. Ten years after establishing Hull House Jane Addams created the nation’s first juvenile court system.

On December 10, 1931, Jane Addams was rushed to the hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, the same day she won the Nobel Peace Prize. She died in Chicago on May 21, 1935.

School History

Jane Addams Elementary was known as Gallistel School when the city of Chicago acquired it as part of the 1889 annexation of Hyde Park.  Located at 104th & Ewing Avenue, the building itself was relocated almost immediately to make room for the construction of a new Gallistel School on the original site.  Meanwhile, the old school building, now at 110th & Green Bay Avenue, became a Branch of Gallistel School.  By August of 1928, entropy had caught up with the old building: the walls threatened collapse at any moment.  Thus, the building was razed, and portables were erected in its place for the first day of school in September of 1928.  On September 6, 1948, the Jane Addams Elementary School opened in a new building at 10810 South Avenue H as a Branch of Gallistel, thus making the decades-old portables obsolete.  On January 31, 1949, Jane Addams became an independent school.  Adams has undergone several other large-scale improvements over the years, including a 1996 annex to remedy overcrowding and the addition of a campus park in 1998.  Addams Elementary still serves its students at the same 10810 South Avenue H location today.