Start of the Great Chicago Fire

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 of 1871 started in the barn behind the cottage of Patrick and Catherine O'Leary at 137 (after 1909, 558) DeKoven Street.[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 is now occupied by the Chicago Fire academy,[1] near the intersection of Roosevelt Road and Canal Street, just southwest of the Loop. The address of the academy "...by design is the same as that where legend has it that Mrs. Mollie (sic) O'Leary's cow kicked over the lantern that started the Great Chicago Fire."