As part of Open House Chicago, the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum will extend its weekend hours for visitors to explore the museum’s two historic buildings. In celebration of our current exhibition Perennial City: Experiments in Urban Gardening, visitors can also express their creativity at drop-in workshops with book-binder Regin Igloria or artist Olly Costello. You can also peruse Hull-House Books, devoted to the work of authors and artists who share the museum’s mission to inspire civic action. 

The Hull-House site includes the original 1856 Hull Mansion with bottle bottom glass windows and unique hand-crafted molding. A rare, pre-fire architectural gem, the house consists of eight spacious rooms devoted to the history of the settlement. Be sure to visit Jane Addams’s Bedroom, tucked behind the curving black staircase on the museum’s second floor. Then explore the Residents’ Dining Hall, constructed in 1907, eighteen years after the opening of Hull-House. Beautiful and inviting, the Dining Hall attracted residents to the settlement and became a vital place that fostered alternative thinking and collective action over a communal meal. The Dining Hall is the only remaining Hull-House settlement building designed by Allen and Irving Pond in the Arts & Crafts style.  

Open House Chicago is a free annual festival hosted by the Chicago Architecture Center that offers behind-the-scenes access to buildings of architectural, cultural and historical significance.