The home of Patrick and Catherine O'Leary, their two children, and an Irish tenant family on DeKoven Street. Although the fire that started in the O'Leary barn left the house intact, it destroyed Mrs. O'Leary's reputation. Although the civic board empowered to investigate the cause of the Great Fire exonerated her, the popular imagination vilified her as a hag--a lurid example of all the laziness, drunkenness, and stupidity then commonly ascribed to the Irish.

Source: Chicago Historical Society (ICHi-02737)