CEGU

On February 20, 1852, a train station opened on 63rd Street between Wentworth and State Avenues.¹ The first railroad to utilize this station was the Northern Indiana and Chicago Railroad, a passenger line that formed part of the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway, itself a key segment of the New York Central Railroad’s Water Level Route.² In 1898, after 46 years of operation, the station was expanded and renamed Englewood Union Station, a title it retained until its closure nearly eighty years later.³

Englewood Union Station was a brick and stone structure that was elevated above the street level.⁴ Streetcars and buses stopped at the lower level passageway, and at the upper level, there were three sets of platforms that formed a triangle.⁵ These three platforms and three sets of tracks serviced the four passenger railroads that passed through the station: the aforementioned Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railroad (LSMS), the Chicago Rock Island & Pacific Railroad (CRI&P), the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne, & Chicago Railroad (PFW&C), and the New York, Chicago, & St. Louis Railroad (aka the Nickel Plate Railroad, (NKP)).⁶ These trains ran on the Rock Island, New York Central (NYC), and Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) tracks.⁷

The station shared two major similarities with the larger terminals in the Loop—its set up and its service. Like its counterparts downtown, Englewood had a telegraph office on the ground floor, a taxi stand, waiting room, newsstand, and ticket offices at the track level, and a baggage room in a separate building.⁸ More importantly, the station was comparable to the downtown stations in its level of traffic. In fact, in his book *Terminal Town*, DePaul University professor Joseph Schwieterman argues that “for passengers on long-distance trains, Englewood Union Station was unquestionably the region’s most important transfer point outside of downtown Chicago.”⁹

The station’s importance to long-distance travel is in large part attributed to its strategic location along Lake Michigan.¹⁰ In the first half of the 20th century, the city of Chicago served as the principal point of departure for East Coast travelers headed west. However, the locations of its large terminals in the downtown Loop were located further north than the southerly end of the lake, making it an inconvenient and expensive place for travelers to transfer trains.¹¹ Transfers between the “Big 6” downtown stations could be lengthy and pricey, as some of the stations were greater than a mile and a half away from each other and lacked convenient public transportation connecting them, requiring travelers to either walk or hail a cab.^{12, 13}

As such, passengers (and railroad companies) needed a station that was more cost- and time-efficient, making the railroad junction at 63rd and Wentworth/State Streets the perfect candidate. Its location closer to the southern end of the lake (over eight miles south of downtown) allowed for trains traveling through the region to avoid the Loop, providing straighter and faster routes and cutting down as much as an hour and a half of travel time.¹⁴

At its height in the 1940s and ’50s, Englewood Union Station was one of the most important long-distance transfer stations not just in Chicago, but in the country.¹⁵ It was the only Chicago station where a passenger could take a train headed towards every major city on the eastern seaboard.¹⁶ In 1942, Englewood Union Station had 101 long-distance trains and 24 commuter trains.¹⁷ A passenger could take three different railroads to New York City and could directly travel to cities like Des Moines, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Denver, Phoenix, and Los Angeles.¹⁸ In 1946, it directly reached 52 of the country’s 199 largest cities, more than any other station in Chicago and second in the nation only to St. Louis Union Station, which reached 60 cities.¹⁹ Furthermore, the station saw a “roster of trains that rivaled that of Chicago’s great downtown stations,” including famous passenger trains like the PRR’s *Broadway Limited* and NY Central’s *20th Century Limited*, both of which ran east from Chicago to New York City.²⁰

Additionally, Englewood Union Station was important for local and regional travel. The streetcar line on 63rd Street, which ran until 1953, connected the station to other important locations along 63rd Street.^{21, 22} To the east at 63rd and Dorchester Streets was the other major long-distance train hub outside of the Loop, which served the Illinois Central line. Many passengers would use this streetcar line to transfer between these two stations in order to avoid having to transfer downtown.²³ To the west, the streetcar connected travelers to the bustling 63rd and Halsted commercial district and to the CTA ‘L’, with several stations along 63rd Street at Harvard, Parnell, and Halsted.²⁴ The availability of significant access to the local transit network made Englewood an important station for South Side residents and business travelers alike.²⁵

However, like the rest of the rail network in Chicago, the station saw a steep decline in use during the postwar period. With the arrival of the Interstate Highway System and the Boeing 707 (the first passenger plane used widely for long distance travel) in the 1950s, Americans had access to many more options for long-distance travel, bringing the era of rail-dominated travel to a close.²⁶ In Chicago, this divestment from rail manifested in huge cutbacks in services and eventually in the closure of stations and whole lines. These rail cutbacks, coupled with large scale divestment and depopulation of the neighborhood surrounding Englewood Station, led to a decrease in passenger traffic.^{27, 28} Additionally, the station became isolated from other forms of local public transportation: because of the closure of the streetcar system, Englewood Union Station was no longer connected to the ‘L.’

The station saw its biggest and most consequential changes in the late ’60s. In 1965, the Nickel Plate Railroad discontinued its passenger trains, and in 1968, Rock Island’s westwardly Golden State Line closed.²⁹ One of the three sets of tracks was removed after the New York Central and the PRR merged to form Penn Central in 1968.³⁰ By the end of 1968, almost all trains to Chicago skipped Englewood Union Station en route to the Loop’s Union Station.³¹ By the end of the year, the number of intercity trains calling at Englewood Union Station was 27.³²

As the station fell into disuse and disrepair, conditions and services decreased. The waiting room and ticket offices closed in 1969, Rock Island’s long-distance trains stopped using the station, and Penn Central filed for bankruptcy and closed in 1970.³³ The crucial blow to the station came in 1971, when Amtrak, the country’s new primary operator of long-distance rail, opted not to use the station on its route through Chicago.^{34, 35} Service to Englewood Union Station ceased in the late ’70s, when Rock Island’s commuter trains started skipping the station; it was demolished soon after.³⁶ Today, the most prominent remains of the station are the massive concrete viaducts near 63rd and State.³⁷

Despite the closure of this station, its strategic location along the lake remains an important place for travel in the region. The Metra commuter rail uses the tracks for its Rock Island Line. The Dan Ryan Expressway and the CTA Red Line run a block to the west of the old station, with a CTA stop at 63rd.³⁸ The continued importance of the 63rd and Wentworth junction is clear in the scheme of the Dan Ryan, which acts to merge the I-90 and I-94 Interstate routes as they head into the city, mirroring the merging of the bygone railroad tracks that once served some of the nation’s greatest long-distance trains.

However, despite the continued presence of transportation at this intersection, the nature of this transportation has changed. 63rd and Wentworth went from being a destination to a stop off the highway. The block that once housed the largest transfer station outside of the Loop, a provider of service to most major American cities, is now only occupied by a single gas station and a set of dilapidated tracks.