page_title: Irving Kane Pond
section_title: Hull House and settlement house movement
hierarchical_section_title: Irving Kane Pond / Architect / Hull House and settlement house movement
caption_attribution_description: English: Architectural drawing, "Auditorium and Coffee House at Hull House," Pond and Pond architects
context_page_description: Irving Kane Pond was an American architect, college athlete, and author. Born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Pond attended the University of Michigan and received a degree in civil engineering in 1879. He was a member of the first University of Michigan football team and scored the first touchdown in the school's history in May 1879.
  After graduating from Michigan, Pond moved to Chicago where he worked as an architect from 1879 to 1939. He began his architectural career as a draftsman in the offices of William LeBaron Jenney and worked as the head draftsman in the office of Solon Spencer Beman during the construction of the planned Pullman community. In 1886, Pond formed the Chicago architectural firm Pond and Pond in partnership with his brother Allen Bartlitt Pond. The Pond brothers worked together for more than 40 years, and their buildings are considered to be among the best examples of Arts and Crafts architecture in Chicago. The Ponds gained acclaim as the architects of Jane Addams' Hull House, and three of their buildings have been declared National Historic Landmarks—the Hull House dining hall, the Lorado Taft Midway Studios, and the Frank R. Lillie House.
context_section_description: The Pond brothers gained their greatest acclaim as the architects for Jane Addams's Hull House.  Their father's work as warden of the state prison had sparked an interest in social reform and the settlement house movement.  Allen Bartlitt Pond was the assistant superintendent of the Armour Mission, an educational and healthcare center, when Jane Addams came to Chicago in January 1889 looking for a building in which to open a new settlement house.  The two became friends and were riding in a carriage when Addams saw an old two-story brick house on Halsted Street.  Addams took a lease on the house, which she named Hull House after its original owner, and hired the Ponds to put the old house into shape.
  Between 1890 and 1907, the Ponds were the architects for the Hull House as the project expanded rapidly.  The first building they designed for Hull House was the Butler Art Gallery.  Built in 1891, the Butler Gallery was situated on the same lot as Hull House.  It consisted of a reading room, an exhibition hall that was "the last word in design and lighting for those days," and a studio above. Numerous other building projects followed, including the original coffee house and gymnasium in 1893, the Children's Building in 1895, remodels and additions to the original building in 1895 and 1899, the Jane Club in 1898, a new Coffee House and Hull House Theater in 1899, the Hull House Apartments and Men's Club in 1901 and 1902, the Woman's Club (Bowen Hall) in 1904, the Boys' Club in 1906 and the Mary Crane Nursery in 1907.  The Pond brothers were affectionately known by residents of the Hull House complex as Allen the "deep Pond" and Irving the "wide pond."
  One of Addams' biographers wrote that the "Pond brothers did it all, harmonized everything," and described the scene when Irving Pond attended Addams' memorial service in 1935:
  Irving K., at Jane Addams memorial services in the Hull House Court, when Doctor Gilkey said, 'if you seek her monument look around you,' looked round also with tears in his eyes but pride in his heart; the visible memorial to Jane Addams was also a visible memorial to the Ponds.
  The only surviving building from the Ponds' Hull House complex is the 1905 dining hall, a simple Craftsman style building that was designated as a National Historic Landmark in the 1960s.
  The Ponds also designed club houses and settlement houses for other social reform organizations, including the Chicago Commons settlement house building (1901), the Northwestern University Settlement House (1901), and the City Club of Chicago building (1910).  The City Club building, noted for its "gently curving limestone arch that ties together the windows of the second floor," is today operated as the John Marshall Law School.  When the City Club building opened in 1910, it was considered a symbol of the reform movement:
  The new building embodied the soaring expectations of the reform movement, as well as providing the material comforts of a middle-class social club.  Its two-story dining-lecture hall, complete with balcony and private eating chambers, accommodated over two hundred for the weekly luncheon talks on social and political issues of the day. ... Architect and club member Irving K. Pond declared that 'every line of the building illustrated some phase of the uplift movement.'
caption: Auditorium and Coffee House at Hull House
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