@marmarinou / marmarinou.tumblr.com
Via Flickr:
“We go back 40 years ago photographing the CTA rush hour. It seems just about every 5 minutes a train would come. These were cool cars to ride in with open windows back in the good old days.”
Chicago
May 1981
Photo by Mark LLanuza
Source:
From The Trolley Dodger blog: “CTA 7156 heads south on Broadway at Lawrence in Uptown on February 15, 1957, the last day of streetcar service on Broadway. The film Giant, starring James Dean, Rock Hudson, and Elizabeth Taylor, opened in the US on November 24, 1956, and was playing at the Uptown. You can see the Green Mill lounge a bit south of the Uptown. The Riviera Theater would be just out of view to the left here.”
Chicago
Photo by Robert Heinlein
Action at Armitage
“A southbound Ravenswood All Stop train led by a single car 1-50 approaches Armitage as a northbound North-South train of 6000’s has just emerged from the Subway.”
Chicago
May 1977
Photo by Lou Gerard
From The Trolley Dodger blog: “North Shore Line 714 heads up a northbound train at Loyola on July 13, 1955. Car 714 is now at the Illinois Railway Museum.”
Chicago
(Wien-Criss Archive)
The CTA station at Fullerton and Sheffield, 1950s.
Note the trolley buses on Fullerton.
From Chicago-L.org:
“Two Ravenswood trains -- an A train heading toward downtown on the left and a B train heading to Kimball on the right -- pass each other at Roscoe, just north of where the Ravenswood branch leaves the main line, in 1963. Center-door 4000s like these provided most of the service on the branch at this time.”
(Photo by Jim Northcutt, from the Illinois Railway Museum Collection, courtesy of Peter Vesic)
Many Chicagoans are familiar with the smell of cocoa and chocolate that comes from the Blommer Chocolate factory located just northwest of the Loop at the intersection of Kinzie St, Milwaukee Ave, and Desplaines St. They are mainly a supplier to other companies making chocolates and candies, but they do have an outlet store at the factory. Today the Chicago Tribune reported that the outlet store will be closing at the end of February. But the factory will continue operating.
The factory is served by not one but two separate rail lines, one on the lower level and one on the upper level. Here are some photos I took in 2013 showing the west side of the factory and the upper-level rail line. Both lines are now owned by the Union Pacific but were originally the Chicago & North Western.
In the bottom photos are details from the 1931 railroad bridge over Desplaines Street, including remnants of a C&NW herald that was painted on the bridge.
Top: From The Trolley Dodger Blog: CTA 687 at Division and Crosby on May 17, 1954, in Chicago. Photo by Bill Hoffman (Wien-Criss Archive)
Bottom: 1985 photograph looking northeast at the William Green Homes of the Cabrini–Green housing project.
Urban change twice over:
The 1954 view is looking east down Division Street toward Lake Michigan; the streetcar is turning from/to Crosby Street. Halsted Street is behind the photographer. Everything on the left of this photo for many blocks was torn down and replaced within the next ten years when the William Green Homes of the Cabrini-Green housing complex were built.
In the 1985 photo, the Cabrini-Green high-rises dominate the view. The high-rise closest to the viewer is facing the intersection of Division and Crosby. The two bridges crossing the Chicago River are Division Street (lower left) and Halsted Street (lower right).
As of 2011, all of the high-rise public housing buildings of Cabrini-Green had been demolished. In their place today are mostly empty lots, and at the corner of Division and Larrabee, a large Target store.
Santa Fe - Aberdeen Avenue by d.w.davidson Via Flickr: “Wearing its original black and silver zebra-striped paint scheme, AT&SF Alco RS-1 No. 2398 heads east with a way car hop on the North Joint Approach to Chicago Union Station, in March 1963. Most likely, this is the return trip after delivering a passenger car transfer to the Milwaukee Road’s Western Avenue Coach Yard. No. 2395 spent most of its career assigned to Santa Fe’s 22nd Street Coach Yard.”
This job would use the through tracks located east of the platforms at Chicago Union Station, alongside the Chicago RIver, to the PRR at 21st Street, where there was a connection track into the Santa Fe coach yard.
Chicago
Photo by Paul Sartori (collection of D.W. Davidson)
