With a passion for tolerance and service to others, pioneer social reformer Jane Addams (1860–1935) was born on this day in Cedarville, Illinois. Her father was a prominent businessman and Republican state senator.

“The excellent becomes the permanent,” she once said.

As a child, her father gave her a nickel for every book she read and understood. She became a voracious reader, and by age 15 had read every volume in the family library.

“When I grow up,” young Jane told her father, “I want to build a beautiful house, then I will invite all the poor people to come and stay with me.”

And that’s what she did. With her lifelong friend Ellen Starr, she founded Hull House in 1889 — a community center in one of Chicago’s poorest neighborhoods. What they envisioned as a “center for a higher civic and social life” became a national model of educational and social service innovation.

“Social advance depends as much upon the process through which it is secured as upon the result itself,” said Addams, an enduring example of hope and courage.

Through Hull House, she embraced immigrants, championed equality, and lived the meaning of democracy. An advocate for peace and justice, she became the first American woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931.

“This dream,” she said, “that men shall cease to waste strength in competition and shall come to pool their powers of production is coming to pass all over the earth.”

Jane Addams carried so much quiet courage... She saw dignity where others saw division, and instead of waiting for change, she built it, one soul at a time. Hull House wasn’t just brick and mortar… it was heart, healing, and hope.