Dearborn Observatory

Evanston, United States

Exterior only

Visible from the street; the inside is private.

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The Dearborn Observatory, constructed in 1888 on Northwestern University's Evanston campus, is a Richardsonian Romanesque structure of limestone designed by the architectural firms Cobb and Frost and William W. Boyington. Built through an agreement between the university and the Chicago Astronomical Society, it housed the Dearborn 18½ inch refractor, which was the largest telescope in the United States during the late 1860s and notably used to discover Sirius B. The structure was relocated in the summer of 1939 to accommodate construction of the Technological Institute; the original telescope tube and mounting have been preserved at the Adler Planetarium since 1929.