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Robert A. Millikan House

historic house in Illinois, United States

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 31, 2026
Entity authorityQ7341272
Source-derived summary

The Robert A. Millikan House is a historic house at 5605 South Woodlawn Avenue in the Hyde Park community area of Chicago, Illinois. 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. The three-story brick building earned National Historic Landmark status on May 11, 1976.

Description and history

The Robert A. Millikan House stands in Chicago's South Side Hyde Park neighborhood, northeast of the University of Chicago campus at the southeast corner of South Woodlawn Avenue and East 56th Street. It is one of a sequence of three adjacent houses designed by the Chicago firm Tallmadge & Watson and built about 1907. It is three stories in height, with a mainly brick exterior. It has a broad profile in the Prairie style, with slightly projecting broad gabled sections near the ends, and a narrower off-center entrance projecting. The full third level, and the second level of the entrance section, are finished in Tudor-style half timbering. Window placement and size are somewhat irregular. The building interior is relatively plain.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Robert A. Millikan House” as historic house in Illinois, United States. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Robert, Millikan and House.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1907, 1868, 1953, 1908—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1907. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Robert, Millikan and House providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Robert A. Millikan House”, the useful work is to connect “historic house in Illinois, United States” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7341272. Authority coordinates are 41.793, -87.596. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1907, 1868, 1953 and 1908.

Critical limits

Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  2. Expand the search: follow Robert A. Millikan House primary sources, Robert A. Millikan House archive and Robert research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Robert A. Millikan House” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.