For generations, Chicagoans played in the nursery school, debated political issues, learned folk dancing, or attended citizenship classes at the city's world-famous Hull-House. From its founding as a settlement house in 1889 by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr, Hull-House offered an abundant variety of community services, social activities, and educational opportunities to nourish the spirits and address the material needs of its working class neighbors on the Near West Side of Chicago. Committed to humanizing the industrial city and fostering an informed, active citizenry, Hull-House became a model for progressive educators. The talented residential volunteer staff at Hull-House became expert social investigators who documented neighborhood conditions with statistics, but also with passion. Their pioneering studies of child labor, sweatshop communities, housing, sanitation, and public health became potent ammuniton for social reform legislation and influenced social welfare agendas throughout the nation.