In 1856, five leading citizens gathered in the Marine Bank Building office of J. Young Scammon at Lake and LaSalle Streets "for the purpose of organizing a Historical Society." Early the following year, one of these men, attorney I. N. Arnold, then a member of the Illinois legislature, successfully introduced a bill to incorporate the Chicago Historical Society—only twenty years after the city itself had been incorporated. In November of 1864 the Society formed a Building Committee that soon purchased from Arnold a lot at the northwest corner of Dearborn and Ontario streets, on which it proposed to erect a headquarters that would be "solid, substantial, and fireproof." The architect Edward Burling prepared the design seen here. Only the west third was completed by the time of the opening on November 19, 1868.
