Urban Reformers Jane Addams Jane Addams was born in 1860, less than a year before the outbreak of the Civil War. She died in 1935. She became known as the “Mother of Social Work” for her pioneering efforts to address the problems people suffered because of poverty and lack of opportunity. She graduated from Rockford Female Seminary in Illinois. She went on to study at Woman’s Medical College in Pennsylvania but left due to depression over the death of her father, her own ill health, and her growing disinterest in medicine. Toynbee Hall She first traveled to Europe from 1883 to 1885 and again from 1887 to 1888. It was on the second trip that she learned of Toynbee Hall settlement house in London. It had been founded in 1884 with the goal of bridging the gap between social classes and of improving conditions for the poor. Addams used Toynbee Hall as a model for Hull House. Hull House Addams founded Hull House in Chicago in 1889, with her fellow reformer Ellen Gates Starr. The house was named after its builder, Charles Hull. Addams and Starr renovated the original building. Eventually, Hull House added twelve more buildings. It also opened a nearby playground and a camp in Wisconsin. Addams and Starr were joined in their efforts by a number of other women, including Florence Kelley and Alice Hamilton. A Lifelong Activist Addams and her colleagues also worked to change child labor laws. Addams worked with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), campaigned for woman suffrage, and was a pacifist leader. She was a member of the Anti-Imperialist League, the Women’s Peace Party, and the International Congress of Women. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931. Jacob Riis Jacob Riis was born in Denmark in 1849 and immigrated to the United States at the age of twenty-one. He lived there until his death in 1914. After a rough start to his new life in America, he found work as a reporter. Assigned to work as a police reporter in New York’s Lower East Side, he discovered that in some tenements one in ten infants died. How the Other Half Lives Riis’s book told the stories of the cramped tenements of New York and provided gripping photos that had been produced with the new technology of the flash bulb. The book was a major success and led to new laws regulating and improving tenements. Theodore Roosevelt responded to Riis’s book by saying, “I have read your book, and I have come to help.”.