The four story Romanesque brick building was built in 1885 by contractor Frank G. Kelly[3] to the design of the Lynn firm Wheeler & Northend for the General Frederick W. Lander Post 5 of the Grand Army of the Republic, an American Civil War veterans organization.

[5] With declining membership in the organization, the building was turned over to the city in 1919 by a Special Act of the Massachusetts Legislature.

The father[9] of co-architect William Wheelwright Northend, Massachusetts State Senator William Dummer Northend, while attending Governor Dummer Academy as a child, became longtime friends with General Frederick W. Lander[10] for whom the Lynn G.A.R.

In 2018, a fundraising campaign was started to raise as much as $10 million for needed repairs, renovations, and preservation of the museum's collection.

This article about a National Register of Historic Places listing in Essex County, Massachusetts, is a stub.