Chicago, IL Depot: IC Millennium/Randolph Street/Great Central Depots

(Chicagology; Satellite, 82+ photos)

The Illinois Central was one of the first railroads into Chicago. Because the Rock Island beat them to the preferred route to Chicago from the south, IC got permission from the city to build up the lakefront because the rich property along Michigan Avenue needed a breakwater. Thus IC's first depot, Great Central Station, was built on landfill up near the Chicago River and opened in 1856. (Some sources indicate 1855.) Since the IC built the tracks needed by Michigan Central to access Chicago, MC also used the Great Central Station. Since Union Station wasn't even conceived of yet in the 1850s, CB&Q also used this 1856 station via the St. Charles Air Line.

Even though CB&Q had moved their operations to Union Station, Great Central Station was near capacity. So, in anticipation of the increased passenger traffic cause by the World's Columbian Exposition, IC built the Central Station down by 12th Street to handle intercity and exposition traffic. Then they replaced Great Central Station with Randolph Street Terminal to service commuter traffic. Millennium Station is bassically a remodeling of Randolph Street Terminal.

Great Central Station

"It opened on June 21, 1856, cost $250,000 and for a time was the largest building in downtown Chicago." [Chicagology]

Paul Petraitis posted
This is how the ICRR transformed the lakefront...its an Alexander Hesler panorama from 1858. Probably from the roof of a hotel near Adams and Michigan looking NE towards Randolph St.
Dennis DeBruler I wonder if the building on the other side of the river from the station is the McCormick Harvester plant. He built a factory in Chicago in 1847 to be closer to his market and transportation. From what I have been able to determine, the building was in the northeast corner of what is now Michigan Avenue and the river. This photo also shows how important the grain trade was to Chicago. Schooners took grain to Buffalo for shipment on the canal and brought back coal from the Pennsylvania mines.
Paul Petraitis And salt from Buffulo! And yes that's McCormick's plant.
Dennis DeBruler Streets had already been raised for sewers by 1858, correct?
Paul Petraitis Only just starting south of Lake Street...

Kevin Pahl posted
Illinois Central Depot in Chicago, engraved print from Harrper's Weekly,1859. (Ebay listing)
Paul Petraitis Chicago's commercial success was national news! The folks in the foreground to the left are sitting on landfill on the east side of Michigan Avenue! Looking north east
Dennis DeBruler This also shows that IC's grain elevators were big at a rather early date. And we can see the masts of some of the schooners on the river.

David Daruszka added eight photos:

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In 1856 the Illinois Central erected Central Station at the end of a causway built to bring the railroad into the city.

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Designed by architect Otto H. Matz at a cost of $250,000. The most distinctive feature of the station were the three masonry arches fronting the wooden train shed. The shed incorporated a Howe Truss and measured 166 feet wide and 36 feet high. On its completion the station was the largest building in Chicago.

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Other railroads that used the station prior to 1871 were the Chicago & Alton Railroad, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, the Galena & Chicago Union and the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & St. Louis Railway from 1886 to 1893.
Dennis DeBruler Your first image, the map, reminded me that Chicago, Burlington & Quincy also used this station in the early years. And Michigan Central used it even longer. In fact, MC, B&O and the Big Four not only used this station, they used the IC to access Chicago. Big Four joined the IC in Kankakee. MC joined around 116th. B&O joined around 70th.

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Central Station's headhouse fronted on South Water Street. A subsequent fire in 1874 following the great fire of 1871 damaged the headhouse.

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Traffic peaked at 100 intercity trains per day in 1890. Suburban trains operated out of the separate Randolph Street Terminal.

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An early view looking north towards the station. The small lake between Michigan Avenue and the causway would eventually be filled in with debris from the Great Fire of 1871. For decades the area was dominated by the IC's freight yards.

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The Great fire of 1871 destroyed the train shed which was never rebuilt.

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A post fire stereo photograph of the damages train shed. The building remained in use as a station until 1893 upon completion of the new Central Station at 12th Street and Michigan Avenue.

David Daruszka edited a photo shared by Brandon McShane shared by Paul Petraitis posted by Don Andrade
Michigan Avenue near Madison, 1860.
Paul Petraitis posted
Probably about 1857, probably by Hesler

Paul commented on his posting

Kevin Pahl posted
Illinois Central Depot in Chicago, engraved print from Harrper's Weekly,1859. (Ebay listing)
Paul Petraitis Chicago's commercial success was national news!

David Daruxzka commented on a post about Monon's access to Chicago before Dearborn was built.
The façade of the station.

Michael Riha posted

150 Years Ago...and likely taken a few days after everything cooled down:

Workers clean up rubble from the Great Union Central Railroad Depot, located at the foot of Lake Street near where the Prudential Building stands today, after the Great Chicago Fire in 1871. (Chicago History Museum)

Jayn Edmonds: How does fire turn brick/stone to rubble?
Jeff Lewis: It gets extremely hot. That's not a joke. Every material has a combustion point, but that is not the limit of the heat it can generate. Wood combusts at up to 300 degrees but can burn at up to 1000 degrees. That's hot enough to light charcoal and turn bricks into red hot coals. If that heat spreads to 100 bricks the temp can exceed 2000 degrees, hot enough to melt bricks into lava and turn steel into slag.
Jer Centa: Jeff Lewis Also don't ignore the effects of trapped moisture or air pockets in any material.

Randolph Street Terminal

Bill Molony posted
Six Illinois Central 2-4-4T steam locomotives and their wooden-coach commuter trains at Randolph Street during rush hour - circa 1900.
Mitch Markovitz (South Water Street.)

Howard Keil shared
Glen Mill posted, cropped differently
 Randolph Street Station, Chicago, in 1895 and one of the most exciting sounds in the world, was a steam engine pulling out of a station, blowing its whistle! Here are five of them.
Jeff Bransky In 1916 they got serious about all that air pollution right at the Loop and looked into solutions. The suburban commuter lines were electrified in 1926 and completely converted by 1927. In addition, the tracks were lowered in Grant Park and beyond, eliminating all grade crossings. Further south, except for the South Shore Line, all of the tracks were raised up on berms eliminating grade crossings.

Terry Spirek shared his Flickr link
[Note that this is the same photo as Bill's above this one, but it is cropped differently.]
Historical picture of Illinois Central station 1885 Chicago Illinois.

The road we see to the left (West) of the station is not Michigan Avenue. There were some buildings between the IC railroad and Michigan Avenue.

1 of 24 images posted by David Daruszka via Dennis DeBruler

David Daruszka commented on Terry's share
The South Water Street Station did not exist until electrification. It was a coaling station as evidenced in this photo.
The Forney locomotives did not carry a great deal of coal or water. Having to take them to the nearest servicing facility would have been a onerous, time consuming task. Having those facilities at the station made sense. Notice the water tower on the right.

Sunny Dhillon posted
Randolph Street Station 1895
[In the comments, Sunny defended not giving any credit as to where the photo came from. I was so mad, I didn't dare add to the comments.]
Patrick McNamara Illinois Central Locomotives at Randolph Street Station - 1893 - from the Newberry Library Collection
Mitch Markovitz (Actually South Water Street)
Sunny Dhillon The Encyclopedia of Chicago posted a variation and states "Photographer: Unknown"

"Illinois Central Railroad steam locomotives at Randolph Street Station, 1893.
Photographer: Unknown
Source: Chicago Historical Society (ICHi-31457)"

http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/3275.html

Dennis DeBruler shared
The comments indicate that this was actually the Illinois Central's South Water Street Station taken in 1983. And the comments include a circa 1896 photo of IC's Randolph Street Station. But what struck me was all of the coal smoke. This illustrates why a Smoke Abatement Report was issued in 1915 and why the IC's passenger service was electrified. The development of diesels allowed IC to skip electrifying their freight operations. The report called for all of the railroads to electrify. So why was only the IC electrified? The city did successfully force all of the railroads to elevate their tracks at the beginning of the 20th Century. My theory is that once the big wigs setting in their offices along Michigan Avenue had a clear view of the lake, they didn't care what the rest of the people in the city saw (and breathed). Then later diesels and natural gas heating got rid of the coal smoke anyhow.
Dennis DeBruler This is the report. I have no intention of actually reading the report, but I do make use of the maps that start around page 300. https://archive.org/details/smokeabatementel00chicuoft
Jeff Grunewald New York did it too. All inbound steam trains had to switch to electric locomotion in New Jersey for the last miles into Grand Central and Penn stations.
Rod Truszkowski I have copy there awesome nice photos and info in it
Robert Strand Actually, while there is smoke, the plumes are from the safety valves, or maybe the generators.
Dennis DeBruler Plumes of steam would explain why they are white. The humidity in Chicago is high enough that a little extra water is not going to make an impact.
David Schnell The building in the background is actually the South Water Street COALING station. It would not be converted into a passenger station until 1924.

Thomas Manz posted
There was a 1915 study on smoke abatement that focused heavily on electrification of all the city's railroad teminals and trackage. Why was the IC the only one to convert?
David Daruszka The IC was singled out to be the first railroad to electrify because of its prominent location on the lakefront. The rest of the railroads were to then follow, but the advent of diesel locomotives negated that plan. The authors of the electrification plan conveniently omitted the coal fired boilers that heated homes and commercial buildings as being an additional source of the problem.
Keith Folk https://archive.org/details/smokeabatementel00chicuoft
Jon Roma Someone posted elsewhere an old picture of Marshall Field's State Street store from the Fifties, and the exterior walls were virtually black with soot.

I don't think anyone perceived passing passenger train smoke to be the primary issue. Rather, it was areas where switching resulted in an abundance of smoke and roundhouses where steam locomotives were sitting around making smoke.

My mother has memories of traveling through Pittsburgh in 1947, and recalled that you couldn't see the downtown for all the smog. Of course the problem there was without question the result of steel production and other industry, not railroads.
Jon Roma I hope you didn't fail to observe that my last comment specifically called out the steel mills of Pittsburgh.

There was legislation to clean up the steel mills, which was slowed by WWII, but eventually began to improve the air quality. Oil pipelines constructed during World War II eventually made it feasible to use much cleaner fuel. Finally, as you noted, the steel industry in Pittsburgh is a mere shadow of its former self. However, what remains is far cleaner than its equivalent 80 years ago.

There's an interesting article about water and air quality issues in Pittsburgh at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK222035/.
Dennis DeBruler By 1915, the City had successfully forced the railroads to elevate their lines in Chicago. They probably figured that electrification was no more expensive than that project.
Dennis DeBruler Up until the late 1800s, smoke coming out of smokestacks was considered a sign of prosperity. Look at postcards from back then and you will see that the artist made sure that there was plenty of black smoke coming out of every smokestack. So the public's opinion about smoke changed 180-degrees within a decade or two.
[There are more comments about the ICC and Amtrak.]

Jarelle Alexander posted

David Daruszka commented on a posting
Mitch Markovitz is correct in that the image is at South Water Street. The image below shows the station at Randolph Street circa 1898. The Suburban tracks have always gone as far as South Water which is essentially the end of track. Randolph Street had a small station adjacent to Michigan Ave. (Beubien Court) with the pedestrian bridge that spanned the tracks. The exit to South Water still exists today.Sunny Dhillon There is an Encyclopedia of Chicago link with this photo indicating that it is Randolph Street Station and cites the Chicago Historical Society. But they could be wrong. Thanks for the input that it could be the South Water Street location. http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/3275.html

John Sniffen posted
And they’re at the gate! IC commuter trains at Randolph Street Station ready for their evening rush-hour runs. Dated circa 1900. No photo credit. University of Chicago Photographic Archive, apf2-04264, Special Collections Research Center.
Chuck Earley Oh how the landscape has changed for Randolph St. which now is covered by Millennial Park.
Mike Adduci John Sniffen spent 1/8 of my life digging cable under Randolph st/ prudential building. Amazing to see what it was before. When we would dig there we would dig up stuff from the Chicago fire.

David Daruszka commented on a posting
I believe this was South Water Street in the 1950's.

David Schnell commented on a post
The exact date is May 21, 1895 at 5:25 p.m. The building in the background is the South Water Street COALING station. It would not be converted into a passenger station until 1924. The photographer must have been standing on top of Randolph Street Station.

William Shapotkin posted

No doubt many of you have heard of the Metra (IC) Electric service in Chicago having been shut down much of the last week due to wire problems AND due to a CN frt derailment in Harvey, IL -- which brought down the overhead (and stranded virtually all the equipment at the south end of the railroad).

There was a time when the IC did not worry about wire problems -- as witnessed in this view (looking north) of Randolph Station in the 1890s. Earl Clark collection.
Chuck Roth Smokey times
Bill Stokes Looks like South Water Street exit
[Before they built Wacker Drive, Chicago's produce market was along South Water Street.]

David Schnell posted three images with the comment:

OK. I figured it out. The Illinois Central’s first Randolph Street Station and South Water Street station that is. The first photo is a very large version of a photo that most of you have probably seen. It is most always identified wrongly as the Randolph Street Station. Several of us have tried to get it corrected, to no avail. The building in the center is not the South Water Street passenger station. It is the South Water Street COALING station. It was not converted to a passenger station until 1924. The first Randolph Street Station underwent extensive alterations in 1904. Thus, those platforms that we see are extensions of Randolph Street’s platforms. The second photo is a slightly different version of the first photo. If you look at the end of the fourth train from the left, you can see a car that is curving around the end of the platform. Those platforms did not go all of the way to the building. The third photo is a closer view of the South Water Street coaling station, taken before 1904. As for the date of the first two photos being wrong, they were obviously taken from Randolph’s overhead walkway. That walkway did not exist until 1904. The fourth photo was taken in 1902. The arrow points to the first Randolph Street Station, with no overhead walkway That means that the first two photos were not taken in 1890, 1893 or 1895 as is claimed by different sources. The earliest that they could have been taken was 1904. The final image is part of the text that was published by the National Railway and Locomotive Historical Society. The article was entitled “History of Illinois Central Passenger Stations on the Chicago Lake Front” by Charles H. Mottier. Please share this post.

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Bob Lalich commented on David's post
Very interesting! I would never have thought that the structure at South Water St was for locomotive servicing, as there was a suburban roundhouse located near 12th St. Which issue of NRLHS has the article?
David Daruszka Having a coaling station at South Water would make sense given the limited capacity of the Forney tenders. A quick recoaling at the station makes mores sense than having to go to the Weldon Shops.

David Daruszka commented on David's post
I believe this is the overhead concourse mentioned in the text.

Millennium/Randolph Street Station

Long before Millennium Park was built, IC electrified their commuter service. This allowed them to remove all of the dirty coal handling from Randolph Street Station near the beginning of the 20th Century. And IC sold the electrified tracks to Metra several decades later. At the turn of the millennium, the city, with significant corporate financial support, but Millennium Park. That park is essentially a ceiling for the commuter operations and Randolph Street Terminal was renamed Millennium Station.

Marty Bernard posted
I posted this substitute METRA train yesterday for a South Shore train at Ogden Dunes.
Here it is at Randolph St. in March 1987.
[Actually, that post says it is at Michigan City.]
Mitch Markovitz: Because someone will ask, passengers used the "lake side" doors of the train where a temporary gravel platform was created.