Chicago History Museum is the museum of the Chicago Historical Society (CHS). The CHS was founded in 1856 to study and interpret Chicago's history. The museum and library has been located in Lincoln Park since the 1930s at 1601 North Clark Street at the intersection of North Avenue in the Old Town Triangle neighborhood, where the museum has been expanded several times. Long known as the CHS, the society adopted the name, Chicago History Museum, in September 2006 for its public presence.
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History
Much of the Chicago Historical Society's first collection was destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire in 1871, but the museum rose from the ashes like the city. Among its many documents which were lost in the fire was Abraham Lincoln's final draft of the Emancipation Proclamation. (This draft had been donated by Lincoln to nurse Mary Livermore for her to auction to raise funds to build Chicago's Civil War Soldiers' Home) After the fire, the Society began collecting new materials, which were stored in a building owned by J. Young Scammon, a prominent lawyer and member of the society. However, the building and the new collection were again destroyed by fire in 1874. The Chicago Historical Society built a fireproof building on its pre-1871 building-site at 632 North Dearborn Street. The replacement building opened in 1896 and housed the society for thirty-six years. The building was later added to the National Register of Historic Places as the Old Chicago Historical Society Building.
Charles F. Gunther, was a prominent Chicago collector who donated several items to the Chicago Historical Society. In 1920, the society paid $150,000 for the remainder of the large historical collection from his estate, with the intention of changing its focus from merely a research institution to a public museum. Many of the items in Gunther's collection, in addition to being related to Chicago, were related to Abraham Lincoln and the American Civil War. These include Lincoln's deathbed, several other pieces of furniture from the room where he died in the Petersen House, and clothing that he and his wife Mary Todd Lincoln allegedly wore the evening of his assassination.The collection also contains the table on which General Robert E. Lee signed his 1865 surrender to General Ulysses S. Grant, an official act that ended the American Civil War, at the McLean House in Appomattox, Virginia. Shortly after buying the Gunther estate, the society began building a $1 million museum to display its expanded collection. The building opened in 1932 at Clark Street and North Avenue, and is currently known as the Chicago History Museum.