Built about 1907, it was the home of American physicist Robert A. Millikan (1868-1953) from about 1908 until 1921, the period in which he made his most significant Nobel Prize winning work.

It is one of a sequence of three adjacent houses designed by the Chicago firm Tallmadge & Watson and built about 1907.

[4] Robert Millikan, an Illinois native who received the first Ph.D. in physics from Columbia University, moved into this house about 1907.

It is there that he organized and performed his famous oil-drop experiment, which provided the most accurate measure of the time of the electrical charge of an electron.

He also established an experimental apparatus that was used to confirm the photoelectric effect postulated by Albert Einstein in 1905.