Biohazard Cleanup Near West Kankakee Kankakee, IL

Kankakee is a city on the Kankakee River and the county seat of Kankakee County, about 60 miles south of Chicago.

The city's name is believed to derive from a Miami-Illinois word, and the area was inhabited by the Potawatomi before French Canadian settlers arrived in the 1830s.

Kankakee was founded in 1854, the year after Kankakee County was created, and it was incorporated as a city in 1865.

Kankakee had a population of 24,052 in the 2020 census, down from 27,537 in 2010, and it anchors the Kankakee-Bourbonnais-Bradley metropolitan area.

Kankakee has about 9,100 households according to Census Bureau figures, and only about half of its homes - 50.8% - are owner-occupied, an unusually low rate.

Kankakee is a birthplace of the Prairie School of architecture: Frank Lloyd Wright designed the B. Harley Bradley House here in 1900-1901, a 6,000-square-foot riverfront home with more than 90 art glass windows that competes for the title of Wright's first Prairie-style residence.

Right next door to the Bradley House stands Wright's Warren Hickox House of 1900, designed for Bradley's brother-in-law, and both houses are part of Kankakee's Riverview Historic District.

Kankakee Community College, organized in 1966 and holding its first classes in 1968, serves the region from a 178-acre campus on the south bank of the Kankakee River.

Public school students in Kankakee attend Kankakee School District 111, whose flagship is Kankakee High School, and the city is also home to the Catholic Bishop McNamara high school, which began in 1922 as St. Patrick High School.

The Kankakee River, which flows through the city, is known as one of the cleanest rivers in Illinois and draws anglers and paddlers to the city.