This photo was taken in December of 1984, at the now abandoned site of the
Grand Trunk Western Railroad Elsdon Roundhouse at West 49th Street and South
Kedzie Avenue, in Chicago's Elsdon neighborhood. This 1914 built locomotive
facility was closed in October of 1983, and demolished in the winter of 1987.
Today, this is the site of a retail strip mall.
1 comment:
Thanks for sharing the photo. Wonder if we could find one of the front of the roundhouse. The Southwest News-Herald (local paper) might be a source to find some old photo stock.
The roundhouse was seemingly abandoned in the early or mid 1980's. It sat vacant - brickwork intact but most of the windows broken - with the white on blue GT logo clearly visible from Kedzie. It was back from the street a ways and I believe it was surrounded by a rusted out 8 or 10 foot chain link fence.
I was born in the mid-1970's in that neighborhood and I never recall seeing anyone working at that roundhouse, from the front anyway, there may have been more activity toward the back.
The roundhouse was cleared for the construction of the new Jewel at 4938 S. Kedzie which opened in summer 1990. The Jewel was built back from the street and aligned with the service drive in front of the Kmart which faced west. The Kmart was the former Bearing company manufacturing plant and it was converted to retail around 1983(original brickwork, sandblasted to a sand/yellow color, later painted grey.)
The parking lot of the Jewel store (former roundhouse property) was upraised 2-3 feet from the street on Kedzie Ave (because Kedzie depressed as you walked north toward the viaduct.)
The GT viaduct was later used for the Orange Line CTA train.
However even after the retail construction, I believe there were still some outbuildings remaining from GT, further west on the lot. I worked at that Jewel and remember we would see people (homeless, they would steal pallets) and some structures further back behind the store.
Also there were new homes constructed on the 5000 block of Christiana on the former GT property in the 1990's.
The Jewel store closed sometime around 2001 (probably was on a 10-year lease.) Sad to see it go, it was a newer design store, one of the only Jewel-Osco's that was white brick, and it had green metal roofwork and window frames. It was larger than the 1980's era Jewel stores, but basically the same layout inside. After 1995 Jewel started building larger stores than this model. The neighborhood changed rapidly from about 1994 to 2000 and Jewel (or now Albertson's) probably gave up hope that the economy there would revive.
After sitting vacant for a few years, it looks like the property has been converted to an L-shaped strip mall with a wing added on the north side of the property (back to the tracks.)
I don't know if any commercial rail still uses those tracks or if it is only rapid transit now.
Sorry for the off-topic history and info but it is good to reminisce about that neighborhood. Thanks again for posting about the GT line.
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