My guess is that this picture was taken from a top floor in the Uptown Bank Building, looking south toward Wilson Yard. You can spot the Broadway Building in the foreground, the distinctive tower of St. Mary's Church at the top of the photo, and the McJunkin Building just below that. It is one of the many fabulous photos that appear in The Chicago "L" by Greg Borzo.
Caption reads: "In 1908, the 'L' extended service to Howard and beyond to Evanston at ground level. In 1914-1922, it elevated the track from Wilson to Howard on an embankment rather than a steel structure. This was done to support the weight of freight cars that the 'L' handled from 1920 to 1973 between Church Street in Evanston and Irving Park Road in Chicago. A huge yard was built at Wilson in 1900. Much later, a massive four-track repair and maintennce building, seen in the center background of the view south in 1961, was added. A continuous four-track main line had just been completed here, replacing a two-track bottleneck."
Greg Borzo is a co-author of The Windies' City: Chicago's Historical Hidden Treasures.
My birthday is coming up on Thursday (hint-hint), and this would make a terrific addition to my book collection. :-)
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Wilson Yard, 1961
Friday, January 4, 2008
The Last Northern Frontier
I stumbled across this today, an article in an online magazine called Jargon Chicago about the Uptown neighborhood:
When Thadeus Wong bought the Uptown Broadway Building for a cool $1.1 million in 2003, he probably wasn't thinking about the perpetual mystery he was about to foist onto a part of town that for so long has wondered when it was going to get a taste of that sweet, sweet municipal facelift going on everywhere else. He probably wasn't anticipating the legends that would eventually spring forth from the bookstore set to open across the street, nor was it likely he was licking his chops over the $4 million the city would later hand over to cover the cost of the seemingly endless renovation of that hulk at 4707 N. Broadway...
Read the rest at Jargon Chicago.
