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is an inner-ring suburb of St. Louis, located in St. Louis County, Missouri. As of 2006, the city population was 26,936. The
city was founded in 1853 and is named after James Pugh Kirkwood, builder of the Pacific Railroad through that town. It was the first planned suburb located west of the Mississippi River.
The Kirkwood Pioneers and Webster Groves Statesmen alternate as hosts of the Turkey Day game, the longest-running football high school rivalry west of the Mississippi. Held annually, Thanksgiving Day 2007 marked the 100th anniversary of the first match.
Plans for a new community close to St. Louis began following the St. Louis Fire (1849) and the 1849 cholera outbreak that had killed a tenth of the residents of downtown St. Louis. Kirkwood was the first suburban municipality built outside of the Saint Louis City boundaries.
Hiram W. Leffingwell and Richard Smith Elliott bought land from downtown in 1850 at about the same time James P. Kirkwood was laying out a route for the Pacific Railroad. When the railroad reached the community in 1853 they sold lots for the Kirkwood Association. Other Leffingwell developments were to include the construction of Grand Avenue and the establishment of Forest Park (St. Louis).
The original town plat including quarter section blocks and families could be a block estate of . Deed restrictions prohibited industrial development.
The train station of Richardsonian Romanesque style was built in 1893. It is now on the National Register of Historic Places and is a symbol of the town. It is the only stop on Amtrak in the Missouri metropolitan area outside of St. Louis.
Among the five buildings on the National Register of Historic Places is a Frank Lloyd Wright house in Ebsworth Park Foundation.
However, Kirkwood has been the site of two sensational crimes in less than 13 months throughout 2007 and 2008.
On January 12, 2007, Michael J. Devlin was arrested for abducting 13-year-old William "Ben" Ownby. Police investigating the case discovered Shawn Hornbeck living at his house. Hornbeck was 11 when he was missing in 2002 and the Shawn Hornbeck Foundation had been set up to find him.
On February 7, 2008 a gunman opened fire inside a Kirkwood city council session, killing five persons: Council Member Connie Karr, Council Member Michael H. T. Lynch, Public Works Director Kenneth Yost, and two police officers, Sgt. William Biggs and Officer Tom Ballman. Two others, Kirkwood mayor Mike Swoboda and Suburban Journals reporter Todd Smith, were wounded. The gunman, Kirkwood resident Charles L. Thornton, was shot and killed by police. Swoboda died, succumbing to cancer as well as complications from the February shootings the same year on September 6, 2008.