[2] In 1916, in an early act of historic-building preservation, a group of wealthy Chicagoans bought the house and donated it to the American College of Surgeons (ACS).

[6] With a majority of its original features intact, the building today is a well-preserved example of the Aesthetic Movement as translated into the design of homes for wealthy Americans in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

This is seen in the wide variety of highly ornamented styles stemming from Japanese, Chinese, English, French, Moorish, ancient Greek, Renaissance Italian, and other influences.

With its profusion of motifs and materials, the Nickerson House is indicative of the Victorian love for display as well as the general architectural mood emerging in Chicago in the years before the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition.

Construction on Nickerson House began in 1879, shortly after the 1871 Great Chicago Fire and the resulting development of city ordinances for the fireproofing of masonry structures.

Samuel Nickerson hailed from Brewster, Massachusetts on Cape Cod, where his family was instrumental in the development of the area's commercial shipping and fishing.

It also served as exhibition space in which the Nickersons displayed their renowned art collection of American and European paintings and drawings, Indian jewelry, and Japanese and Chinese ivories and curios.

Other notable residents of the Gilded Age period include Ransom R. Cable, Lambert Tree, Perry H. Smith, Joseph T. Ryerson, and Edward T. Blair.

[11] After purchasing the house, Fisher hired the Prairie School architect George Washington Maher to redesign Nickerson's art gallery, making it into a trophy room and rare book library.

As part of the remodeling, new book cases and a monumental mantlepiece, attributed to Robert E. Seyfarth who was an architect in Maher's office at the time, were installed in the gallery.

[12] After the house remained on the market for three years without a buyer, a group of prominent Chicagoans, including Cyrus Hall McCormick II, William Wrigley, Jr., and Julius Rosenwald, were concerned about the possible demolition of the magnificent residence.