The Washington Street Mission in Springfield, Illinois, was founded in 1910 as a result of the desire of a group of local businessmen to create a lasting institution from the effects of Billy Sunday meetings in that town. It was funded by a gift of George Coe, City Commissioner, and administered by Robert Thomas Brown. Its first address was 713 East Washington Street. Facilities included dormitories for men, a kitchen, rooms for storing clothes, food gifts, a study room, sewing room, and a chapel for services and Sunday School use. The Mission ministered to families and individuals in all types of distress: orphaned, estranged, and run-away children, senior citizens, non-American families, alcoholics, transients, unemployed, and single men and women without families. From its beginning in 1910, the Mission doors were open continuously day and night, offering help to an average of thirty-five to sixty-five individuals daily. All services were given free of charge, but each recipient was required to work wherever possible.

In 1911 Robert Brown (1875-1940), co-founder, became president of the Board of Directors and then Superintendent, a position he held until his death. He was the first of three generations of his family who served at the Mission. Before Brown became a permanent staff member, he had been secretary-treasurer of Vredenburgh Lumber Company, which had sold lumber to build the tabernacle for Billy Sunday's Springfield campaign in 1909. Brown was converted at one of these meetings. Subsequently he was tutored in the Bible by a friend, Lavinia Smith, who attended Dwight L. Moody's summer camp in Northfield, Massachusetts. As a result, he himself became a Bible teacher at the Mission and in the Springfield area, assisted in this by George Wright, a local cotton grower, and teachers like Florence Robertson, who worked with slow children and those who could not speak English. The Sunday school in these years often included three hundred children a week.

Brown married in 1896, and a daughter, Mary, was born in 1902. The family also included a second daughter, Margaret, and a young girl, Ruth, who joined them when she was eleven years old and who remained as a sister to the Brown daughters until she was twenty-four. Mrs. Brown and the girls were also active in many phases of the Mission work, though they did not live on the premises. The women often helped with the Girls' School, located on the Colley Estate in Springfield, which had been remodeled for this use.

When Mary Brown married Robert O. Miller, he too began working with the Washington Street Mission and ultimately became Superintendent. After his death in 1970, Mrs. Miller took over his responsibilities and remained in this job until her death, April 19, 1980. The Mission superintendency then went to Mr. and Mrs. James Beatty. In 1974, the Mission was relocated to 408 North Fourth Street from its former address at 111 South Eighth Street because of new construction by the city on the latter site. The grandson of Robert Brown, Thomas O. Kay, Chairman of the Department of History at Wheaton College, was elected Vice President of the Board of Directors for the Mission in 1982. In 1999 Kenneth and Mary Lynn Mitchell became directors of the Mission.