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Robert S. Abbott House

former home of Robert Sengstacke Abbot

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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 authorityQ7349443 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Robert S. Abbott House is a historic house in the Grand Boulevard community area of Chicago, Illinois.

Built in 1900, it was the home of Robert S. Abbott, founder and publisher of the Chicago Defender, the most-circulated African-American newspaper in the nation, from 1926 up until his death in 1940. His home was designated a National Historic Landmark status in 1976.

Description and history

The Robert S. Abbott House stands on Chicago's South Side, north of Washington Park on the west side of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, and on the same block as the Harold Washington Cultural Center on the east side.

It stands at the southern end of a group of row houses, and is the left side of an asymmetrical duplex. Its construction date is unknown, but is estimated to be about 1900 based on its architectural style, which is a combination of Late Victorian and Neo-Classical elements.

The combined units share a hip roof, with that on the left featuring a large projecting gabled section two bays in width. To its right, a single bay set next to the entrance to the adjacent unit, while the on its left, the unit's entrance is sheltered under a separate side porch. The interior, which has been further broken up into separate living units, retains some of its original elements.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Robert S. Abbott House” as former home of Robert Sengstacke Abbot. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Robert, Abbott 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—1900, 1926, 1940, 1976—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Robert, Abbott 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 S. Abbott House”, the useful work is to connect “former home of Robert Sengstacke Abbot” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7349443. Authority coordinates are 41.810, -87.616. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1900, 1926, 1940 and 1976.

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.

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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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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Robert S. Abbott 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.