Many students frequent the downtown bars of Lord Stanley’s and Otto’s, but do they know how much history surrounds them?

Stephen Bigolin, an employee of PhotosNow, 121 S. Fourth St., specializes as a Victorian architecture researcher.

As an NIU alum with a history degree, Bigolin has spent more than 30 years researching the first settlement in DeKalb and all the history in between.

“It was popular to name towns after prominent soldiers and battles,” Bigolin said, when describing the birth of DeKalb.

Bigolin said that essentially is how DeKalb received its name. A soldier of fortune, as Bigolin put it, Baron DeKalb was well-known for being a professional soldier before the Revolutionary War, in which he would fight for whatever country paid him the most. DeKalb eventually died in a battle in 1780 during the Revolutionary War, and because of his prominence and war-time heroism, his name became one of eventually nine city names.

The city was called DeKalb Center in 1853 when the railroad was extended. In the early 1880s, it was changed to DeKalb.

Bigolin once again touched on Huntley when he mentioned the red sandstone building at 105 N. First St., which is now a business. This site originally was Huntley’s log cabin, used both as his living quarters and a stagecoach stop until 1887. The building later was purchased by Issac Elwood, and in 1897, he gave the property over to his daughter Harriet Elwood Mayo. It was sold again in 1922 to what was the DeKalb Elks Lodge until 1994.

Another historical landmark stands next to the old DeKalb Chronicle building at 123 E. Lincoln Highway. A wrought-iron fence was placed there, supposedly because now deceased DeKalb resident and then-Chronicle co-owner Ed Raymond had an old, unsettled dispute with the next-door property owner over something he wouldn’t elaborate on with Bigolin.

“I had wondered for the longest time time why it was there and what it symbolized,” Bigolin said. “Mr. Raymond wouldn’t explain further what that dispute was. He said it was such a touchy subject.”

Bigolin said people have speculated that the fence originally was a part of the old Saint Mary’s Catholic Hospital at 145 Fisk Ave.

But the one oddity that Bigolin said oftentimes goes unnoticed and has withstood the test of time is a small blacksmith’s horseshoe located next door to the old McCabe’s Tavern at 323 E. Lincoln Highway. On the sidewalk is an old horseshoe that marks the blacksmith business ran by Phineas Vaughan in the late 19th century.

Bigolin said the horseshoe was placed there after Vaughan’s death because the blacksmith was so highly regarded around town. But in the past, reconstruction of the pavement has endangered the DeKalb landmark.

“The city had funding for renewal on the pavement and I went to the Public Works director at the time and told him to keep the horseshoe there,” Bigolin said. “Buried at the Evergreen Cemetery on Seventh and Taylor is Phineas Vaughan, and another thing of interest is his headstone that actually is shaped like a blacksmith’s anvil.”