- DeKoven Street (Chicago)
-
DeKoven Street 1120 South DeKoven Street is a street in Chicago, Illinois named for John DeKoven, one of the founders of the Northern Trust Company.[1]
The Great Chicago Fire started at 137 DeKoven Street, now numbered 558 West DeKoven, in a barn belonging to Patrick and Catherine O'Leary.[2] Although the popular story is that a cow kicked over a lantern to start the fire, Michael Ahern, the Chicago Republican reporter who created the cow story, admitted in 1893 that he had made it up because he thought it would make colorful copy.[3] At the time, the street was in a less prosperous neighborhood of Chicago. The site of the barn now houses the Chicago Fire Department training school,[1] near the intersection of Roosevelt Road and Canal Street, just southwest of the Loop.
References
- ^ a b Haymer, Don; Tom McNamee (1988). Streetwise Chicago. Chicago: Loyola University Press. pp. 30. ISBN 0-8294-0596-8.
- ^ Pierce, Bessie Louise (1957, rep. 2007). A History of Chicago: Volume III: The Rise of a Modern City, 1871-1893. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. pp. 4. ISBN 978-0-226-66842-0.
- ^ "The O'Leary Legend". Chicago History Museum. http://www.chicagohistory.org/fire/oleary/essay-2.html. Retrieved 2007-03-18.
Coordinates: 41°52′08″N 87°38′29″W / 41.869002°N 87.641501°W
Categories:- Streets in Chicago, Illinois
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.
