Chicago Wells Street Station
The Wells Street Station was a station of the Chicago and North Western Transportation Company in Chicago . The station was abandoned in 1911 in favor of the Chicago and North Western Terminal . Today the Merchandise Mart wholesale building is located on the site of the train station .
location
The station was north of the city center, known as the Loop , in a block bounded by Kinzie Street to the north, Wells Street to the west, the Chicago River to the south and Orleans Street to the west. The station building faced Wells Street.
history
In the years 1852/1853 the Galena and Chicago Union Railroad built a train station on the corner of Wells Street and Kinzie Street on the north side of the Chicago River . To connect the station to the route network, a pontoon or raft bridge was built over the Chicago River according to plans by JD Perkins . The brick-built station had two floors and a square floor plan with a side length of 13.7 meters. The main entrance was on Wells Street. The cargo and baggage rooms faced Kinzie Street. After Wells Street was filled and raised, the rail company was forced to make appropriate adjustments. In the years 1862/1863, one floor was added to the building. In addition, the building on the Kinzie Street side was lengthened by 9.1 meters. The railway company's offices were housed in the additional rooms.
This station was destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire in 1871 . The Chicago and North Western Railway (as the successor to the Galena and Chicago Union Railroad, which was taken over in 1865) then built an interim station made of wood.
In 1880/1881 the company built a new massive train station on the same site. The station, inaugurated on May 23, 1881, was connected to the rest of the rail network via the movable Kinzie Street railway bridge. The station was the largest of Chicago's four stations when it opened. For the first time, Chicago & North Western was able to start and end all passenger trains in a station in Chicago. Designed by William W. Boyington , the building combined Gothic and Greek elements. The station cost $ 250,000 and was made of red brick and gray sandstone . The five-story building was 57 meters on Wells Street, 85 meters on Kinzie Street, and an average of 24 meters high. The central clock tower reached a height of 57 meters. The station had 12 platform tracks.
Soon the station no longer met the requirements for the increased number of people (around 1895: 200 trains a day with 32,000 passengers, around 1905: 300 trains with 50,000 passengers), so that further extensions were built south of the main building at the end of the 1890s.
However, the increasing traffic on the railways and on the Chicago River made it increasingly difficult to handle the traffic over the folding Kinzie Street railway bridge on schedule. The structures were also no longer sufficient for the number of passengers. The C&NW therefore built a new train station on the western side of the Chicago River. The Chicago and North Western Terminal opened in 1911. At the same time the passenger station on Wells Street closed. Freight traffic was continued.
In 1930, the Merchandise Mart wholesale building was built on the site of the station .
literature
- William H. Stennett: Yesterday and today: A history of the Chicago and North Western Railway system , Winship Co., Chicago 1910 online
- Frank Alfred Randall, John D. Randall: History of the development of building construction in Chicago , University of Illinois Press, 1999, p. 245 online
Web links
Individual evidence
Coordinates: 41 ° 53 '19.5 " N , 87 ° 38' 4.3" W.