Google Doodle houses Jane Addams tribute

Don't know much about history? Don't worry -- Google's doodlers do.

The Google Doodle for Friday turns its (and our) attention to one of the heroic figures of America's Progressive movement, Jane Addams, a pioneer and leader in areas ranging from social work to women's suffrage to the quest for world peace. In 1931, she won a Nobel Peace Prize for her work.

Specifically, the doodle focuses on Hull-House, the social settlement in Chicago that Addams founded, with her friend Ellen Starr, in 1889 to provide a refuge and a resource to immigrants and other poor urban residents struggling for a foothold in a rapidly industrializing and often unforgiving society. The facility, which started out in a house built by a Charles Hull, eventually expanded to 13 buildings.

Here's some of what went on at Hull-House, according to the biographical essay on the Nobel Prize site:

Miss Addams and Miss Starr made speeches about the needs of the neighborhood, raised money, convinced young women of well-to-do families to help, took care of children, nursed the sick, listened to outpourings from troubled people. By its second year of existence, Hull-House was host to two thousand people every week. There were kindergarten classes in the morning, club meetings for older children in the afternoon, and for adults in the evening more clubs or courses in what became virtually a night school. The first facility added to Hull-House was an art gallery, the second a public kitchen; then came a coffee house, a gymnasium, a swimming pool, a cooperative boarding club for girls, a book bindery, an art studio, a music school, a drama group, a circulating library, an employment bureau, a labor museum.

Addams was born 153 years ago Friday.