Ellen Gates Starr
| Ellen Gates Starr | |
|---|---|
Starr in 1914
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| Born |
March 19, 1859 Laona, Illinois |
| Died | February 10, 1940 (aged 80) Suffern, New York |
| Education | Rockford Female Seminary |
| Parent(s) | Caleb A. Starr Susan Gates Child |
Ellen Gates Starr (March 19, 1859 – February 10, 1940) was an American social reformer and activist. She, along with Jane Addams, founded Chicago's Hull House in 1889.
Ellen Gates Starr was born on March 18, 1859 in Laona, Illinois to Caleb Allen Starr and Susan Gates Child.
From 1877 to 1878, Starr attended the Rockford Female Seminary, where she first met Jane Addams. Forced to leave school due to financial concerns, Starr taught for ten years in Chicago.
Starr joined Addams on a tour of Europe in 1888. 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 and 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 and on her return she established a bookbindery class at the settlement house in 1898 and established an arts and crafts business school.
She also sought to bring the Arts and Crafts movement to Chicago. In 1894, she founded the Chicago Public School Art Society with the help of the Chicago Woman’s Club. The goal of the organization was 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 went on to found the Chicago Society of Arts and Crafts.
Starr was also active in the campaign to reform child labor laws and industrial working conditions in Chicago. She was a member of the Women's Trade Union League and helped organize striking garment workers in 1896, 1910, and 1915. However, by belief she was firmly anti-industrialisation, idealizing the guild system of the Middle Ages and later the Arts and Crafts Movement. She was arrested at a restaurant strike. In the slums of Chicago, she taught children who could not afford school education about such writers as Dante and Robert Browning. She practiced her preachings about community labour to the extent of traveling to Britain to learn bookbinding.
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