Couch Alley

Couch Alley is a narrow, brick-paved passage wedged between the older commercial buildings of downtown Chicago. It takes its name from Ira Couch, an early hotelier who built the first Tremont House nearby in eighteen thirty-nine. Before the street grid shifted, this ground was part of the original cemetery serving the town. When city officials ordered the graves moved to Lincoln Park in the eighteen sixties, they left behind the heavy, iron-bound coffin of the hotel founder himself, buried deep beneath the alley.