Henry Bacon was born in Watseka, Illinois. He studied briefly at the University of Illinois, Urbana (1884), but left to begin his architectural career as a draftsman. He worked in the office of McKim, Mead &amp; White (MMW) in New York City, one of the best-known architectural firms. Bacon's works of that period were in the late Greek Revival and Beaux-Arts architectures associated with the firm, which included the 1889 Paris World Expo, the Boston Public Library, the New York Herald Building, the Harvard Club of New York, Columbia University's Morningside Heights campus, the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, and New York's Pennsylvania Station, among others.