Its creation was due to members of the Schweizerischer Kunstverein (Swiss Society of Fine Arts), and its first president was the Genevan painter Theodore de Saussure.
In the statutes adopted at the meeting of the founding committee, the name of the society was altered to Association for the Preservation of Artistic Monuments of the Fatherland (German: Verein für Erhaltung vaterländischer Kunstdenkmäler).
The association changed its name again at the general meeting in Lausanne in 1881 to become the Swiss Society for the Preservation of Historic Art Monuments (German: Schweizerische Gesellschaft für Erhaltung historischer Kunstdenkmäler).
Rahn also wrote a description of the stained glass window dating from 1530 in the Reformed Church of St. Saphorin (Vaud) and an article on the Casa Borrani (or Serodine) in Ascona with its baroque façade.
At the general meeting in 1882, a request was made to set up an inventory of buildings requiring preservation or restoration works and of objets d'art which were at risk of being destroyed or sold.
In March 1884, the Federal Department of the Interior responded to a motion on the subject of the creation of a Swiss National Museum and entrusted the Society with the acquisition of a certain number of objects of its choice, but the ownership of which would revert to the Confederation.
In the implementing ordinance of February 25, 1887, a Federal Commission for the Preservation of Antiquities of Switzerland was created and its competences and duties were passed to the committee of the Society.
The first issue of this series was devoted to the stained-glass windows of the chancel of the church in Oberkirch near Frauenfeld and the Weinmarkt (wine market) fountain in Lucerne, with texts by Rahn and Zemp.
They were complemented between 1982 and 2004 by the Swiss Inventory of Architecture (German: Inventar der neueren Schweizer Architektur, 1850-1920 INSA), a collection of eleven volumes.