Ellen Gates Starr
Ellen Gates Starr | |
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Rockford Female Seminary |
Ellen Gates Starr (March 19, 1859 – February 10, 1940) was an American
, an adult education center, in 1889; the settlement house expanded to 13 buildings in the neighborhood.Early life and education
Ellen Gates Starr was born on March 19, 1859, in
From 1877 to 1878, Starr attended the
Social reform work
Starr joined Addams on a tour of Europe in 1888.[2] While in London, the pair were inspired by the success of the English Settlement movement and became determined to establish a similar social settlement in Chicago. When they returned to Chicago in 1889, they co-founded Hull House as a kindergarten, then a day nursery, an infancy care centre, and a center for continuing education for adults. In 1891, Starr created the Butler Art Gallery as the first addition to the Hull mansion. She travelled to England to study with the famed bookbinder, T. J. Cobden-Sanderson.[3] After her return, she established a bookbindery class at the settlement house in 1898, followed by an arts and crafts business school.[4][5]
She also sought to bring the Arts and Crafts movement to Chicago. In 1894, Starr founded the Chicago Public School Art Society with the help of the Chicago Woman's Club. The goal of the organization was to provide original works of art and good quality reproductions, to promote public school learning and an appreciation of beauty as a sign of good citizenship. Starr was the president of the society until 1897, when she founded the Chicago Society of Arts and Crafts.[4][5]
Starr was also active in the campaign to reform
Personal life
Relationship with Jane Addams
Religious beliefs
Starr joined the Episcopal Church in 1883. By 1894, she was a member of the Society of the Companions of the Holy Cross, an Episcopal women's prayer society that combined prayer with education and activism for social justice. Founded by
Later life
Although Starr possessed an interest in
In 1929, complications caused by surgery to remove a spinal abscess resulted in her becoming paralyzed from the waist down.[11] In 1931, seriously ill, Starr retired to a Roman Catholic convent in Suffern, New York, where she was cared for by the Society of the Holy Child Jesus. She was not a member of their religious community, nor any other.[12]
After eight years as an invalid, Starr died at the convent on February 10, 1940.[1]
In media
In 2016, St. Hyacinth Basilica Elementary in Chicago's Avondale neighborhood, which had closed in 2014,[13] was used as the setting for Albany Park Theater Project's renowned immersive theater play Learning Curve. It was transformed as the play's "Ellen Gates Starr High School", named for the co-founder of Hull House.[14][15]
Selected works
- (1896) Settlements and the church's duty
- (n.d.) Reflections on the breviary
References
- ^ a b "Ellen Starr Dies. Hull House Aide. Co-Founder With Jane Addams of the Chicago Settlement Succumbs in Convent at 81". The New York Times. February 11, 1940. Retrieved January 9, 2015.
Miss Ellen Gates Starr, co-founder in 1889 with the late Jane Addams of Hull House in Chicago and associated with the institution for more than forty years, died here today in the Convent of the Holy Child, where she had been an invalid for eight years. She would have been 81 years old March 19.
- ^ ISBN 0-8122-3747-1.
- OCLC 57694876.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-8146-6296-0.
- ^ ISBN 978-1-4128-2996-0.
- ^ ISBN 0-8014-2996-X
- ^ Lillian Faderman, To Believe in Women: What Lesbians Have Done For America – A History, Houghton Mifflin, 2000, p118
- ^ "Outing Jane Addams". February 6, 2007. Retrieved August 27, 2018.
- ISBN 978-0-8122-3747-4
- ^ Mary S. Donovan, Women's Ministries in the Episcopal Church, 1850–1920, Wilton, CT: Morehouse Barlow, 1986, pp. 148-154.
- ^ "Education & Resources – National Women's History Museum – NWHM". www.nwhm.org. Archived from the original on November 8, 2016. Retrieved January 23, 2016.
- ISBN 978-0-913820-31-5
- ^ "St. Hyacinth Basilica School in Avondale to Close at the End of School Year". DNAinfo Chicago. Archived from the original on June 28, 2020. Retrieved June 22, 2020.
- ^ Jones, Chris (August 2016). "A day in the life of a public school in immersive 'Learning Curve'". chicagotribune.com. Retrieved June 22, 2020.
- ^ Schaefer, Brian (December 7, 2016). "An Immersive Play That Transports You to a Chicago Public High School". The New Yorker. Retrieved June 22, 2020.
External links
- Ellen Gates Starr papers at the Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College
- Ellen Gates Starr papers Archived October 22, 2022, at the University of Illinois at ChicagoLibrary