Madison was a rapid transit station on the Chicago "L"'s Metropolitan West Side Elevated Railroad, serving its Logan Square branch from 1895 to 1951. The Metropolitan was one of four founding companies of the "L", and the first of its lines to be powered by electricity. The "L"'s companies merged operations under Chicago Elevated Railways (CER) in 1911 and formally merged into the Chicago Rapid Transit Company (CRT) in 1924. Private ownership of the "L" ended in 1947 when the public Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) assumed operations.

MADISON   1700W 0N/0S
Former Chicago 'L' rapid transit station
The Madison station house in its final days, housing a hot dog stand in the 1990s; the steel structure behind the station house was used to support the stairways' landings
General information
Location	1718 West Madison Street Chicago, Illinois, United States[1]
Owned by	Chicago Transit Authority
Line(s)	Logan Square branch
Platforms	2 side platforms
Tracks	2
Construction
Structure type	Elevated
History
Opened	May 6, 1895
Closed	February 25, 1951
Former services
Preceding station Chicago "L" Following station Lake Street Transfer toward Logan Square Logan Square branch Marshfield Terminus

Plans to replace the Logan Square branch whereupon Madison lay with a subway to provide a more direct connection to downtown had dated to the late 1930s, and the CTA opened the Milwaukee-Dearborn subway on February 25, 1951, closing Madison and its adjacent stations in the process, although Madison's tracks and station house remained standing.

The station house continued in use as a commercial building into the late 1990s, when it was demolished despite recognition of its historic significance. The tracks would continue to be used for non-revenue service until they were reopened as part of the Pink Line in 2006. For much of its existence, Madison served the nearby sports arena Chicago Stadium. Given the proximity of the site to Chicago Stadium and its successor United Center, there have been several attempts at reviving the station.

The station was typical of the stations constructed by the Metropolitan on its branches, with a Queen Anne station house and two wooden side platforms adjacent to the tracks.

History

The Metropolitan West Side Elevated Railroad Company was granted a 50-year franchise by the Chicago City Council on April 7, 1892,[2] and began securing right of way shortly thereafter.[3] As designed, the Metropolitan's operations would comprise a main line that went west from downtown to Marshfield, where three branches – one northwest to Logan Square, one due west to Garfield Park, and one southwest to Douglas Park – would diverge and serve various parts of Chicago's west side.[4] A further branch to Humboldt Park would proceed due west from the Logan Square branch just past Robey station.[lower-alpha 1][4][5] Unlike the competing South Side and Lake Street Elevateds, the Metropolitan never used steam traction; although it had originally intended to, and indeed had built much of its structure under the assumption that locomotives would be used,[7] it decided in May 1894 to have electrified tracks instead,[8] making it upon its opening the first electric elevated railroad in the United States.[9] The Metropolitan's tracks on the Logan Square branch were finished by the middle of October 1894, and were powered on in April 1895 for test and inspection runs.[5] The Metropolitan began service at 6 a.m. on Monday, May 6, 1895, between Robey on the Logan Square branch[lower-alpha 1] and Canal on the main line.[10] Eleven stations opened that day, one of which was on Madison Street.[10]

During its lifetime, the station served the nearby Chicago Stadium, a sports arena that would be replaced by the United Center in the 1990s.[1]

Closure and demolition

The CTA instituted major changes on the "L", which was suffering from declining ridership, antiquated infrastructure, and complicated routing. With respect to the lines built by the Metropolitan, it instituted broad changes that had been planned since the late 1930s; the Logan Square branch south of Damen was replaced by the Milwaukee-Dearborn subway, which opened on February 25, 1951. World War II had interrupted plans to construct the subway; although the federal government allowed the continued construction of the State Street subway, it did not do so for the Dearborn subway in spite of its 82 percent completion rate in 1942.[11] After the war ended, work resumed on the Dearborn subway and it opened at the midnight beginning Sunday, February 25, 1951.[11] The subway was predicted to reduce the travel time between Logan Square and downtown from 28 minutes to 15.[11] Since construction had not started on the Congress Line, trains in the subway stopped at its southern terminus at LaSalle and turned back.[11] Despite this incomplete state, the new subway had over 60 percent higher ridership than the old Logan Square branch by the end of the year.[12]

The infrastructure of the former parts of the Logan Square branch remained standing and became known as the Paulina Connector and was used to connect the branch and subway to the rest of the "L" system.[13] Construction on the Congress Line began in 1954, leaving the Douglas branch with the issue of how to connect with the Loop in the meantime.[14] The Paulina Connector south of Washington Boulevard, including where Madison station had stood, was reopened for the purpose,[14] but Madison station remained abandoned.[1]

The canopies and platforms at Madison were removed after its closure, but its station house was converted to commercial use, seeing use as a hot dog stand in the 1990s. The station house survived for much of the 20th century; the city of Chicago conducted the Chicago Historic Resources Survey between 1983 and 1995, marking tens of thousands of structures across Chicago for potential landmark status and color-coding them based on significance. The Madison station house received a code of "Orange", the second-highest color code and indicating a structure significant in the context of its community. Despite this status, the station house was demolished in the 1990s, although the truncated ends of the trusses that had supported the station's platforms and a steel lattice that had been located behind the station house remained until the area was renovated to reenter revenue service as the Pink Line in 2006.[1]

Possible revivals

Given the site's proximity to the United Center, there have been several proposals to revive the Madison station. One such proposal was to reopen the station for the 1996 Democratic National Convention hosted at the United Center, but this did not come to pass.[1] In 2004, while the CTA was planning a putative "Silver Line" service on the Connector that would become the Pink Line, two new stations were proposed on the Line at Madison and at Van Buren for transfer to the Blue Line,[15] but neither came to pass. The Chicago Bulls, housed in the United Center, planned to build a $95 million complex in the area based on possible tax breaks. Mayor Rahm Emanuel suggested building a station at Madison to serve the complex; the CTA declined to reopen a station at Madison at that time, but left open the possibility of a future revival.[1]

Station details

The station was designed by the Metropolitan's engineers and constructed by the Jonathan Clark and Sons Company for general contractor Alfred Walcott. The station house was made of red pressed brick with stone sills and foundations; much like the other stations on the Logan Square branch, surviving examples of which are at California station and Damen, it has been described as "Queen-Anne influenced with Romanesque features".[1] Its facade was dominated by a corniced and dentiled semicircular bay with two doors marked "entrance" and "exit" despite the lack of an enforcement mechanism for either, as well as a wooden awning for the bay underlaid by wooden beads.[1]

The station had two side platforms. In common with stations throughout the Metropolitan's system, the platforms and stairs were wooden on a steel structure, and had canopies with iron frames and tin hipped roofs. The platforms had railings with square cast iron plates with diamond designs.[1]

Operations and connections

Madison Street was one of the "Big Five" streetcar lines of Chicago in the early-to-mid 20th century, which carried the most passengers, had the shortest intervals between cars, and had two-car trains in contrast to the typical one-car Chicago streetcar the most often.[16] Madison Street was home to some of the earliest transit in Chicago, having a horse car service starting from 1859.[17] Cable cars operated on the street in the station's vicinity until they were replaced by streetcars on August 19, 1906.[17] This line was formally codified as Through Route 20 (TR 20) in July 1921, but this did not tangibly affect service at the station.[17] Two-car motor-trailer trains ran on Madison from October 14, 1923, to July 19, 1930; multiple-unit control trains began on an experimental basis on July 13, 1924.[16] A branch line diverging from the main service on Fifth Avenue, approximately 1.5 miles (2.4 km) west of the station, joined the main line downtown starting August 19, 1906, after having previously been a shuttle; staying a shuttle during the night, it reverted to that status on Sundays starting April 24, 1932.[18] As of 1928, the main line had owl service between 1:01 and 5:20 a.m., during which cars ran for every ten minutes, but the Fifth Avenue branch did not, the last eastbound through-route car departing its western terminus of Crawford Avenue at 12:40 a.m. and the last westbound shuttle departing Madison at 2:00 a.m.;[19] during the day, streetcar lines in Chicago typically had intervals of between eight and fifteen minutes.[16] After the station was closed, buses replaced main line streetcars on weekends starting May 11, 1952 – simultaneous with the Fifth Avenue branch's replacement by buses on Saturdays – and altogether on December 13, 1953, whereupon the Fifth Avenue branch became a shuttle service at all times before it too was discontinued on February 22, 1954.[20]

Notes

References

Works cited

• Borzo, Greg (2007). The Chicago "L". Arcadia. ISBN 9780738551005 – via Google Books.
• Chicago Transit Authority (1951). Seventh Annual Report of Chicago Transit Board for the Fiscal Year ended December 31, 1951 – via Archive.org.
• Chicago Transit Board (1954). Tenth Annual Report for the Fiscal Year ended December 31, 1954 – via Archive.org.
• Lind, Alan R. (1974). Chicago Surface Lines: An Illustrated History. Park Forest, Illinois: Transport History Press.
• Moffat, Bruce G. (1995). The "L": The Development of Chicago's Rapid Transit System, 1888–1932. Chicago: Central Electric Railfans' Association. ISBN 0-915348-30-6.
• "The Metropolitan West Side Elevated Railroad of Chicago". The Street Railway Review. 5: 263–274. January 15, 1895.