Great Hall - Chicago Union Station (1 IMG)

[CopCarSS]

Great Hall, Chicago Union Station by Chris May, on Flickr

 

Taken on my trip to IL/WI back in July. YashicaMat LM with Tri-X 400 stand developed in Rodinal 1:100.

As always, C&C more than welcome!

[Semper Vaporo]

I sometimes wonder if the grand RR stations were designed to make the passenger feel puny!

[Firelock76]

Semper Vaporo

I sometimes wonder if the grand RR stations were designed to make the passenger feel puny!

 

Probably not.  More than likely they were designed with the same philosophy that applied to bank buildings built during the same era.  They (the builders) wanted to give the impression of strength, power, and permanence, and that Chicago Union Station certainly does that!

Can't say the same for the average bank building or Amshack nowadays, can we?

Great shot!

[dakotafred]

Agree with Firelock about the probable intention.The effect on the customer, I would think, would be enhancement, making him feel part of something heroic ... hardly puny. (Always worked for me.) I wish more of our modern buildings, including airports, aspired to "strength, power and permanence." 

[Deggesty]

Back in the days when these were built, there was no such thing as airconditioning as we know it. 

How many of you were ever in the Terminal Station in Birmingham?--that was a great structure. Once when I was in Birmingham in December, I spoke to my brother who lived there, commenting on how much it must cost to heat the waiting room, and he spoke of the necessity of having enough air in the room for the number of people who used it.

It was a sad day when the building was demolished and replaced by a hatbox, even though the station served only a small fraction of the trains that it used to serve. When the dome was demolished, in the night, it fell through the floor into the street beneath the building, even though a heavy stell plate had been laid below the dome. There was nothing passing under the building at the time.

[Norm48327]

Firelock76

They (the builders) wanted to give the impression of strength, power, and permanence, and that Chicago Union Station certainly does that!

I apologize for being cynical but I can't help but think some were built as monuments to the egos of the railroad barons.

[Firelock76]

Norm48327

 

Firelock76

They (the builders) wanted to give the impression of strength, power, and permanence, and that Chicago Union Station certainly does that!

 

 

I apologize for being cynical but I can't help but think some were built as monuments to the egos of the railroad barons.

 

No argument there, I'm sure there was a bit of that in the mix.

Not changing my original supposition though.

[BaltACD]

Norm48327

Firelock76

They (the builders) wanted to give the impression of strength, power, and permanence, and that Chicago Union Station certainly does that!

I apologize for being cynical but I can't help but think some were built as monuments to the egos of the railroad barons.

Just as airports being built today are monuments to the egos of the politicians responsible for them.

[schlimm]

Firelock76

 

 

Norm48327

 

Firelock76

They (the builders) wanted to give the impression of strength, power, and permanence, and that Chicago Union Station certainly does that!

 

 

I apologize for being cynical but I can't help but think some were built as monuments to the egos of the railroad barons.

 

 

 

 

No argument there, I'm sure there was a bit of that in the mix.

Not changing my original supposition though.

 

You are both right, IMO, as the two are not mutually exclusive.

The Great Hall waiting room never made much sense beecause it is and always was across the street, far from the terminal.  Hence it is often close to empty and on a day with not too much sunshine, as in this low-contrast picture, it seems pretty drab.

[ChuckCobleigh]

CopCarSS

Taken on my trip to IL/WI back in July. YashicaMat LM with Tri-X 400 stand developed in Rodinal 1:100.

I'm feeling an attack of nostalgia coming on.  All of the above.

Oh, and great shot.  Obviously not at commute time, though.

[CJtrainguy]

The Great Hall was certainly not that empty on any of the several occasions when I came through Chicago this past July. It did seem that most of the people hanging around there were waiting for one of the many Amtrak trains rather than a commuter train. 

Compared to the low-ceilinged mess that is the concourses near the tracks, the Great Hall is a fantastic space that I really don't mind spending some time in. Thankfully the Great Hall didn't get torn down back in 60's and is still with us today and into the future.

[wanswheel]

Is it really the Great Hall or just the greatest of Waiting Rooms?

http://www.loc.gov/pictures/search/?q=Chicago+Union+Station+&fa=displayed%3Aanywhere&sp=1&co=fsa&st=gallery

[rcdrye]

schlimm

The Great Hall waiting room never made much sense beecause it is and always was across the street, far from the terminal.

During a large part of Union Station's life, it served many passengers transferring between trains.  Even many passengers transferring to other stations would spend time there, before or after their Parmalee Transfer trip.  While it makes less sense now, it's still a useful safety valve during high travel periods.

[CSSHEGEWISCH]

The waiting room (Great Hall sounds too pompous) was located between Canal and Clinton because it wouldn't fit anywhere else.  Chicago Union Station is double-ended and the main concourse absorbs all of the space between the odd-numbered (north side) and even-numbered (south side) tracks and gates.

[schlimm]

CSSHEGEWISCH

The waiting room (Great Hall sounds too pompous) was located between Canal and Clinton because it wouldn't fit anywhere else.  Chicago Union Station is double-ended and the main concourse absorbs all of the space between the odd-numbered (north side) and even-numbered (south side) tracks and gates.

 

 

Exactly.  The station, even the original, is not a very functional design compared to the old Northwestern Madison Street Terminal up the street.

[Deggesty]

CSSHEGEWISCH

The waiting room (Great Hall sounds too pompous) was located between Canal and Clinton because it wouldn't fit anywhere else.  Chicago Union Station is double-ended and the main concourse absorbs all of the space between the odd-numbered (north side) and even-numbered (south side) tracks and gates.

 

I was not in Chicago much before the advent of Amtrak, so I am not certain if the waiting room was called anything else until Amtrak set other areas apart for passengers to use while waiting to board. I do have the impression that someone skilled in naming areas began calling it the "Great Hall" after other areas were set aside for passengers to use.

[CShaveRR]

Chris, I think your image captures the awesomeness of the place beautifully, and I daresay that the black-and-white was probably the more prudent choice artistically.

Beyond that...people these days!

Complaining about the cloudy day, when the waiting room's glass ceiling was blacked out for a good 30 or more years after World War II. 

And complaining about the one-block walk from waiting-room to gate, which pales in comparison to the walk from security checkpoint to departure gate at any decent-sized airport.

The old concourse served its purpose very nicely.  One would hope that a good redesign of the space of (and the space above) the existing rat's-maze could be reconfigured to afford more breathing room, and perhaps a couple more through tracks.

[OWTX]

These monoliths were built in an era when the loss of the modality's dominance wasn't realized, much less internalized by the industry. The demand curve was endlessly upward, so they better build to meet future need.

[wanswheel]

Jack Delano evidently called it the waiting room in 1943. Either that or the Library of Congress just plain refuses to call it the Great Hall.

http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/fsa/item/owi2001017565/PP/

http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/fsa/item/owi2001017499/PP/

http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/fsa/item/owi2001017626/PP/

[CShaveRR]

It was the waiting room in 1943, and right up until Amtrak coined the "Great Hall" appellation when it built the current pressure-cooker for passengers to wait in.  Note how dark the place was, with the blacked-out ceiling.

[schlimm]

Don't blame Amtrak.  It was originally called the Great Hall. The problem with Union Station (1925, Burnham & Graham) isn't the Headhouse Building's Great Hall/waiting room. The problem is the concourse and the rat's nest above it.  The original expansive Beaux-Arts concourse was demolished and replaced with a much smaller facility under one of the Gateway Center structures in 1969 and renovated in 1991.  In 1969 the railroads that owned, Chicago Union Station Company (the succesor railroads to the PRR, CB&Q and Milwaukee Road) made that decision, not Amtrak, which became the owner in 1971.

[wanswheel]

The Armour Engineer, May 1924

The New Union Station Project

While all Chicago goes on its busy way, unheeding, the beautiful new Union Station, one of Chicago's fondest dreams and a symbol of the “Greater Chicago,” is rapidly rising to completion. The steel work of the main head-house is in up to the roof and the masonry and marble work are not far behind. The old, weather beaten, red terminal building which has served Chicago for over four decades is a striking contrast to its magnificent successor of Bedford stone and marble.

The entire terminal, which will be completed early in 1925, stretches from Roosevelt Road on the south to Lake Street on the north and lies between Canal Street and the river, including terminal trackage and lead-ins. The head-house or main station building occupies the entire square block bounded by Canal, Jackson, Clinton and Adams Streets, and will take the form of an eight story office building of the most modern type. The offices form a hollow rectangle, in the center of which is the immense rotunda or main waiting room. This room will reveal to strangers the grandeur of Chicago and its work, for it will be an enormous, vaulted and marble-walled lobby approximately 220 by 100 feet in floor extent, and the crest of its arched, tile and glass ceiling will reach to the seventh floor of the building, about 115 feet above the street. An idea of the vast size of the enclosure may be formed from the fact that the entire Machinery Hall of Armour Institute may be housed in it, with the Assembly Hall thrown in on top of it for good measure. The room represents a great sacrifice of valuable space to architectural beauty, inasmuch, as one of the engineers of the project cannily points out, it is nearly all waste space from the point of view of capacity and train service. The vaulted roof of the waiting room is composed of built-up arch beams connected with a grillwork of steel that will be inlaid with hollow tile roofing. Large skylights are to be built in at frequent intervals so that, as viewed from below, the room will be virtually open to the heavens. In order to relieve the tile and glass from severe stresses during the bitterness of winter, the entire roof will be shrouded with a network of steam pipes for heating it and preserving it at an even temperature.

Although the present structure will be limited to eight stories, the foundation is ample for a twenty-story building, and the steel columns project somewhat above the present roof so that the steelwork for the future addition, if such is desired, may be easily attached to them. The ceiling of the eighth story, which is to be the future ninth floor, is being covered in the meanwhile with a temporary tar and gravel roofing. The engineers have endeavored to strike hardpan or hard rock for their foundation footings and have gone down with concrete footings and shoes as far as sixty-five and seventy feet below city datum, the average elevation of Canal Street being about 14 feet above city datum.

The office building itself will be ready for use in May 1924, and will embody all the modern developments of architectural practice in this field. Where electrical conduits are run through the floors, they are imbedded in cinder fill concrete, and steam and water lines are enclosed with asbestos and tar-paper. For the telephone lines, in accordance with the latest practice, wooden conduits or raceways are run across the floor every four or five feet and all are connected to a main large runway which goes the length of the building. The raceways are firmly secured to the floor beams by copper clad steel clips. Wires may be fished through them before or after the top flooring is laid. Thus, no matter where a desk is placed, a telephone is brought to it by bringing a tap out of the floor no further than three or four feet away. Electrical power will be purchased from the local service company as alternating current at twelve thousand volts and will be transformed to voltages for lighting and elevator operation by large high tension transformers in the basement. Proper air circulation through the building is assured by large galvanized iron air ducts, some of them as much as six feet square. These extend at frequent intervals from basement to roof, with suitable outlets.

The main section of the terminal tracks will be covered by a large concourse of a design similar to that of the head-house directly east, between Canal Street and the river. Foundation footings for this structure are to be about six feet in diameter and are now in the process of pouring. The entire train shed will be glass enclosed and will have the usual arched roof with locomotive smoke-jacks. The concourse and head-house are to be connected by a subway under Canal Street which will handle the entire passenger flow. The trackage is arranged in double stub-end fashion; fourteen tracks to the south, each capable of handling eighteen cars and a locomotive, are for the use of the Burlington, Chicago and Alton, and Pennsylvania roads; and ten tracks of similar capacity leading north are for the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul, and Pennsylvania railroads. For convenience in car interchange, the two sections are tied in by three through tracks east of the loading tracks. One of these latter is already in use for present car movements. Load in tracks rest on creosoted oak blocks over reinforced concrete slabs. Tracks in the shed rest directly on the concrete, as train movements in this region are very slow. Track drainage is provided for, but subsoil drainage is not, as the sub-grade is somewhat close to river level. The subsoil is supported by a heavy retaining wall along the river bank.

Part of the permanent trackage on the south end is in use under temporary train sheds. The railroads on the north end are still using the old station, while the steam shovel men are energetically clearing the space between for the new train shed and concourse.

The new station will probably have a capacity of over three-quarters of a million people daily and there is no doubt that it will be ample to serve four busy railroads of the world's greatest railroad center for many, many years to come. If, however, Chicago is to have a population of fifty million in fifty years, as some engineers estimate, no man can say what demands may be made upon her gateways of transportation. The users of the great Union station at St. Louis were confronted with the necessity and the extremely difficult problem of enlarging it immediately after its completion. The new Chicago terminal trackage, hemmed in on one side by the river and on the other by a magnificent head-house costing millions of dollars, may prove difficult of enlargement if the traffic in years to come demands expansion of its facilities. In the dim future the great terminal may be deposed by a newer and greater edifice as it is now deposing the battered old landmark of forty years’ service which was once the pride of its owners. Nevertheless. for the purposes of the present generation, the new terminal will stand before strangers as one of the first prideful achievements of a “Greater Chicago.”

[BaltACD]

Remember investigating Union Station (also Grand Central, CNW Station, Dearborn Station, LaSalle St. Station and the IC Station down on the lakefront) in the late 50's & early 60's on my monthly or thereabouts trips to All Nation Hobby Shop.

[OWTX]

http://www.unionstationmp.com/

Amtrak issued a RFP on 10/16 to try and squeeze more people through the concourse, and start to repurpose the mail spaces and platforms.

[schlimm]

BaltACD

Remember investigating Union Station (also Grand Central, CNW Station, Dearborn Station, LaSalle St. Station and the IC Station down on the lakefront) in the late 50's & early 60's on my monthly or thereabouts trips to All Nation Hobby Shop.

 

That was one great hobby shop!

 

[Murphy Siding]

CopCarSS

Great Hall, Chicago Union Station by Chris May, on Flickr

 

Taken on my trip to IL/WI back in July. YashicaMat LM with Tri-X 400 stand developed in Rodinal 1:100.

As always, C&C more than welcome!

 

 Of all the neat photos you post, this one might be of some place I've actually seen.  If I had ridden a commuter train into Chicago from Hanover Park, is this where I would have ended up?

[CSSHEGEWISCH]

Murphy Siding

 Of all the neat photos you post, this one might be of some place I've actually seen.  If I had ridden a commuter train into Chicago from Hanover Park, is this where I would have ended up?

 

You still can ride that train, Metra's Milwaukee District West Line timetable lists Hanover Park as an intermediate stop.

[Deggesty]

Murphy Siding

 

 

CopCarSS

Great Hall, Chicago Union Station by Chris May, on Flickr

 

Taken on my trip to IL/WI back in July. YashicaMat LM with Tri-X 400 stand developed in Rodinal 1:100.

As always, C&C more than welcome!

 

 

 

 

 Of all the neat photos you post, this one might be of some place I've actually seen.  If I had ridden a commuter train into Chicago from Hanover Park, is this where I would have ended up?

 

 

To answer your question, you would have had to turn left after you were about half way in towards the south tracks, and gone west, under Canal Street--it is a long walk.

[Deggesty]

Deggesty

 

 

Murphy Siding

 

 

CopCarSS

Great Hall, Chicago Union Station by Chris May, on Flickr

 

Taken on my trip to IL/WI back in July. YashicaMat LM with Tri-X 400 stand developed in Rodinal 1:100.

As always, C&C more than welcome!

 

 

 

 

 Of all the neat photos you post, this one might be of some place I've actually seen.  If I had ridden a commuter train into Chicago from Hanover Park, is this where I would have ended up?

 

 

 

 

 

To answer your question, you would have had to turn left after you were about half way in towards the south tracks, and gone west, under Canal Street--it is a long walk.

 

 

Whoop! I meant to write "right," and not "left."  I usually come in and go out on the south side.

[CShaveRR]

Norris, we're going to have to get you out of seclusion and into some of the "Good Lands"!

Balt, I think All-Nation disappeared around 1980.  It was getting pretty threadbare for years by then.  Of course, the block it was on has a completely diferent character now.  (And yes, I was in all of those stations, though I arrived maybe a year too late to see the old concourse at the Union Station.)

Johnny, I saw a Metra report saying that the Great Hall and the "breezeway" were closed today for some special function.  Do you suppose they were referring to the passage under Canal Street?