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The Elks National Memorial was dedicated on July 14th, 1926, but its history dates back to 1920, when the Elks organization gathered in Chicago to plan a war memorial and headquarters. In 1921, the Elks National Headquarters Committee purchased the site where the building stands today. Construction began in 1923, and was complete in time for its dedication in 1926.

It was built during a prosperous time for the Benevolent and Protective Order of the Elks, which had a booming increase in membership and was in need of a national headquarters. The Elks also wanted a memorial dedicated to the over 70,000 Elks members who served in World War I, and the more than 1,000 members who perished. World War I memorials became a worldwide phenomenon due to the widespread devastation that the war brought. Before World War I, war memorials were not common, except as celebrations of the triumphs of war. Along with most other World War I memorials, the Elks National Memorial showed the worldwide shift to honoring the dead and expressing the tragedy of war. 

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During this postwar period of the 1920s, Chicago had an intense focus on implementing one of the most important treatises of the City Beautiful Movement: Daniel Burnham's 1909 Plan of Chicago. A major component of Burnham's plan was the widespread beautification and preservation of Chicago's lakefront. This work began as early as 1907 around the Diversey Parkway area, and continued through the 1920s, leading to the extension of the park one and a half miles north of Diversey. 

It was within the context of Chicago's large-scale lakefront beautification efforts that the Elks organization was drawn to the city, and specifically the location alongside Lincoln Park.

The Elks National Memorial's connection to the City Beautiful movement was supposed to demonstrate how beautiful architecture should have a positive impact on society, and yet three years after its dedication, the Valentine’s Day Massacre occurred just blocks away, one of the bloodiest gang-related murders to occur in Chicago during the Prohibition era.

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