[14] Addams helped America address and focus on issues that were of concern to mothers or extensions of the domestic-work assigned to women, such as the needs of children, local public health, and world peace.

Addams, still filled with vague ambition, sank into depression, unsure of her future and feeling useless leading the conventional life expected of a well-to-do young woman.

They laid the foundations for American civil society, a neutral space within which different communities and ideologies could learn from each other and seek common grounds for collective action.

The core Hull House residents were well-educated women bound together by their commitment to labour unions, the National Consumers League and the suffrage movement.

Art was integral to her vision of community, disrupting fixed ideas and stimulating the diversity and interaction on which a healthy society depends, based on a continual rewriting of cultural identities through variation and interculturalism.

On the first floor of the new addition there was a branch of the Chicago Public Library, and the second was the Butler Art Gallery, which featured recreations of famous artwork as well as the work of local artists.

As Hull House grew, and the relationship with the neighborhood deepened, that opportunity became less of a comfort to the poor and more of an outlet of expression and exchange of different cultures and diverse communities.

"[53] Thus Hull House offered a comprehensive program of civic, cultural, recreational, and educational activities and attracted admiring visitors from all over the world, including William Lyon Mackenzie King, a graduate student from Harvard University who later became prime minister of Canada.

Hull House used the latest methodology (pioneering in statistical mapping) to study overcrowding, truancy, typhoid fever, cocaine, children's reading, newsboys, infant mortality, and midwifery.

Through the years, their mission has now become improving the social and emotional well-being and functioning of vulnerable children so they can reach their fullest potential at home, in school, and in their communities.

Linking environmental justice and municipal reform, she eventually defeated the bosses and fostered a more equitable distribution of city services and modernized inspection practices.

[60] However, over time, the focus changed from bringing art and culture to the neighborhood (as evidenced in the construction of the Butler Building) to responding to the needs of the community by providing childcare, educational opportunities, and large meeting spaces.

Enlarged housekeeping duties involved reform efforts regarding poisonous sewage, impure milk (which often carried tuberculosis), smoke-laden air, and unsafe factory conditions.

With the help of the Hull House Women's Club, within a year over 1,000 health department violations were reported to city council and garbage collection reduced death and disease.

[64] Addams had long discussions with philosopher John Dewey in which they redefined democracy in terms of pragmatism and civic activism, with an emphasis more on duty and less on rights.

In A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil (1912) she dissected the social pathology of sex slavery, prostitution and other sexual behaviors among working-class women in American industrial centers from 1890 to 1910.

[74] Historian Lilian Faderman wrote that Jane was in love and she addressed Mary as "My Ever Dear", "Darling" and "Dearest One", and concluded that they shared the intimacy of a married couple.

[86]Addams was elected president of the International Committee of Women for a Permanent Peace, established to continue the work of the Hague Congress, at a conference in 1919 in Zürich, Switzerland.

[90][91] Later, during her travels, she spent time meeting with a wide variety of diplomats and civic leaders and reiterating her Victorian belief in women's special mission to preserve peace.

[18] Addams was a major synthesizing figure in the domestic and international peace movements, serving as both a figurehead and leading theoretician; she was influenced especially by Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy and by the pragmatism of philosophers John Dewey and George Herbert Mead.

She recruited social justice reformers like Alice Hamilton, Lillian Wald, Florence Kelley, and Emily Greene Balch to join her in the new international women's peace movement after 1914.

The delegates adopted a series of resolutions addressing these problems and called for extending the franchise and women's meaningful inclusion in formal international peace processes at war's end.

With what abuse did not the [New York] Times cover her, one of the noblest of our women, because she told the simple truth that the Allied troops were often given liquor or drugs before charging across No Man's Land.

[119][120]While "no record is available of any speech she ever made on behalf of the eighteenth amendment",[121] she nonetheless supported prohibition on the basis that alcohol "was of course a leading lure and a necessary element in houses of prostitution, both from a financial and a social standpoint."

Willard Motley, a resident artist of Hull House, extracting from Addams' central theory on symbolic interactionism, used the neighborhood and its people to write his 1948 best seller, Knock on Any Door.

Before Addams's powerful influence on the profession, social work was largely informed by a "friendly visitor" model in which typically wealthy women of high public stature visited impoverished individuals and, through systematic assessment and intervention, aimed to improve the lives of the poor.

Jane Addams also sponsored the work of Neva Boyd, who founded the Recreational Training School at Hull House, a one-year educational program in group games, gymnastics, dancing, dramatic arts, play theory, and social problems.

The main legacy left by Jane Addams includes her involvement in the creation of the Hull House, impacting communities and the whole social structure, reaching out to colleges and universities in hopes of bettering the educational system, and passing on her knowledge to others through speeches and books.

She worked with American philosopher George Herbert Mead and John Dewey[139] on social reform issues, including promoting women's rights, ending child labor, and mediating during the 1910 Garment Workers' Strike.

[161] In 2014, Jane Addams was one of the first 20 honorees awarded a 3-foot x 3-foot bronze plaque on San Francisco's Rainbow Honor Walk (www.rainbowhonorwalk.org) paying tribute to LGBT heroes and heroines.