In 1932, Jane Addams published “The Excellent Becomes the Permanent” a collection of ten eulogies. These include her reflections on artist Alice Kellogg Tyler, whose work is currently on display in the museum, and educator Jennie Dow Harvey, who opened the settlement’s first kindergarten. In her meditations on death, Addams found a distinctive form, one that played into her life-long confrontation with illness, death, and mourning. 

 To explore these and other Hull-House histories of death, memory and legacy, we’re partnering with the Chicago Death Doula Collective. The day will feature a conversation between Education Manager Nadia Maragha and Death Doula Patrice Horton.  They will explore the histories of death at Hull-House with modern options for home funerals and afterlife care. Visitors can also participate in a shroud-wrapping demonstration with textile artist Anders Zanichkowsky, have conversations sparked by Coffin Cards and contribute to a community altar. The goal of this program is to explore the intimate ways that people from the past interacted with death and to consider  practices that we can revive and carry into the future.