Chartered in December, 1856, the National Portrait Gallery first opened to the public in its temporary building on Great George Street in London. George Scharf was named as its first curator. It moved to South Kensington in March 1870 and then in 1896 to its current site in St. Martin's Place, adjacent to the National Gallery. (By John Osborne)
Source Citation
George Henry Townsend, The Manual of Dates: A Dictionary of Reference .... (London: Frederick Warne, 1877), 667.