Losing yet another tie to Chicago’s past

I must confess to turning a year older today, so perhaps it’s only appropriate that I get all nostalgic over something that I’m sure many people would think totally trivial.

Soon to be history. Photographs by Gregory Tejeda

I can’t help but think there’s a loss to the Chicago Transit Authority’s ‘el’ station downtown at Randolph and Wabash streets, which officially closes to the public following this week.

ALTHOUGH I’M SURE some sarcastic types will quip that we’re lucky the ‘el’ platform didn’t collapse due to age and decay before the wrecking crews could get around to demolishing it.

Now a part of the reason I feel some sort of affinity for this particular downtown transit stop is that it is a mere block from the Metra Electric commuter trains that I have lived significant portions of my life from.

Which means a trip into downtown would put me right at the Millennium Park site (even though back when I was a kid, no one would have conceived of such a grand park in place of the railroad yards that still exist underneath the park grounds.

The outside view that someday will no longer be

The point was that I have made many trips that involved taking a Metra Electric train, then transferring over to an ‘el’ train at Randolph and Wabash. And if you’re in the city already but not on the South Side, the Randolph and Wabash station was a location that put you near the Marshall Fields’ of old (now Macy’s, which just doesn’t feel the same), State Street’s shopping district in general and just another block away from the Daley Center courthouse (with the Picasso), then City Hall and the Thompson Center state government building.

Trump will no longer loom over Randolph

MY POINT IS that the ‘el’ station feels like a fairly prominent spot for people traveling throughout the area.

Now I don’t know exactly how old that particular ‘el’ station is – although it has the feel of many decades approaching a full century. It has the feel of a place that has experienced first-hand the history of Chicago.

I often wonder if the people who now go about speculating ridiculously about the chances they would get shot by gang members on Chicago streets while waiting for an ‘el’ train at the station are the great-grandchildren of people who waited at the exact same ‘el’ stop, wondering if they were going to get caught in the crossfire of violence by the Capone mob?

My point being the station has the feel of being a part of Chicago that has been around that long.

Among the Randolph Street sites nearby

AND IT SHOWS.

CTA officials are closing the station effective Sunday, replacing it with a new downtown ‘el’ station one block to the south at Washington Street – which officially is being billed as the Millennium station. That station officially opens Thursday.

I’ll concede that I have long noticed the grime that has accumulated at the Randolph Street ‘el’ station to the point where I wonder what I could catch if I touch something too long, and have often cynically speculated about how secure the platform’s wooden boards could be after all these decades of use.

So I don’t doubt the station’s time to be replaced has come.

Will street musicians still gather at Randolph/Wabash?

ALTHOUGH IT’S GOING to mean the decades of habit I have developed in my mass transit routines are going to have to be adapted to comply with the fact that the ‘el’ station is now one block further to the south.

I doubt I’m alone, since many of us develop transit routines that we follow reflexively, not giving them much thought. Now, we’re going to have to think a few extra seconds to make sure we don’t screw up and wind up being taken to the Monroe Street or State and Lake street stations while travelling through the Loop. Besides, I couldn't help but admire the video snippet I found Wednesday on YouTube posted by someone whom I suspect feels a sentiment similar to my own about this soon-to-be defunct 'el' platform.

I’m wondering if this station will take on a sentiment similar to what I feel for the old Comiskey Park. I must admit that whenever I travel on the Dan Ryan Expressway, a part of me expects to see the old brick, whitewashed ballpark still standing as I approach 35^th Street. Which creates a tinge of disappointment when I see the rose-colored concrete structure that actually is now 27 seasons old.

In my mind, this structure isn't just a decades-old postcard

Am I going to sense the ‘el’ platform that used to exist whenever I travel the Loop and my ‘el’ car passes by Randolph Street?

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