Named in 1922 on a tract owned by Will A. Dunn (1873-1951), who unsurprisingly also laid out Dunn Drive on the tract. (Cattaraugus Avenue, a mile away, is his brainchild as well.) Dunn grew up in Bloomington, Illinois, where Empire Street is one of the main drags. (There’s also an Empire Township a few miles outside of that city.) Although neither Dunn nor his kin (including his wife Fay‘s folks) lived or worked on Bloomington’s Empire Street, my educated guess is that he named our Empire Drive in tribute to it.
Find it on the map:
