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Green Line:
East 63rd (Jackson Park) branch

Legend:

Current Line w/Station

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Accessible Station

Current Line w/Former Station

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Demolished Line w/Former Station

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Service Notes:

Hours of Operation: 4am-1am, Mon-Fri; 5:15am-1am, Sat; 5:50am-1am, Sun
Length of Route: 1.5 miles
Number of Stations: 2 stations
Car Types Assigned: 5000-series
(see Car Assignment sheet for latest car assignments)
 

Brief Description:

The public took to the new elevated line quickly and extensions toward Jackson Park were opened incrementally as new sections were completed. On August 14, 1892, only two months after the railroad began operations, the first extension southward was opened between 39th Street and 47th Street. This was quickly followed by further expansion to 51st, then 55th streets. By the end of 1892, the structure was complete to 63rd Street, allowing 61st station to come into use on January 22, 1893. The next day, the Rapid Transit and Bridge Construction Company officially turned the title for the line it had built over to the South Side Rapid Transit Railroad Company, even though construction was still not quite complete. But in short order, by late spring, erection of the line to Jackson Park was largely finished. Service to Madison Avenue (later Dorchester Avenue), just a couple blocks from Jackson Park, was inaugurated on April 23rd. Service into the park did not begin until May 12th, almost two weeks after the exposition's May 1st opening. (The fair itself wasn't particularly on-time either: it opened a year late, making the Columbian Exposition 401 years after Columbus' "discovery"...) In the interim, passengers bound for the fair could use a specially-designed walkway on the elevated structure to get the additional couple blocks to the fair. When the final segment opened in mid-May, the Jackson Park terminal was above an annex to the Transportation Building in the fair. Here, passengers could either walk out of the station to the fair, enter Louis Sullivan's famous Transportation Building, or transfer to the fair's own elevated, electric Intramural Railway. During late night and early morning hours, the fair grounds were closed and trains terminated at the Stony Island station a mere several hundred feet west.

The Columbian Exposition proved to be both a blessing and a problem for the South Side Rapid Transit. The "L" proved to be a popular way to get to the exposition and ridership was strong. The company even added some express trains from downtown (even though there were no express tracks at the time) and built a second platform at the Congress Street terminal to separate boarding and alighting passengers. But just as the fair boosted ridership, the closure of the fair in October 1893 caused it to crash quickly. Average daily ridership fell from 116,000 in June 1893 to 40,000 in February 1894. After the fair closed, the Jackson Park terminal was abandoned and service was cut back to Stony Island.

 

Important Dates:

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This Chicago-L.org article is a stub. It will be expanded in the future as resources allow.

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