{"id":1169,"date":"2010-03-26T10:45:01","date_gmt":"2010-03-26T10:45:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/?p=1169"},"modified":"2010-03-26T13:33:28","modified_gmt":"2010-03-26T13:33:28","slug":"deserted-57th-street-station-chicago-winter-of-99","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/deserted-57th-street-station-chicago-winter-of-99\/","title":{"rendered":"Deserted 57th Street station, Chicago, winter of &#8217;99"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.urban75.org\/photos\/chicago\/images\/chicago-photos-usa-07.jpg\" alt=\"57th Street station, Chicago, winter of '99\" \/><\/p>\n<p>After a lovely long walk across snow-covered parks and &#8211; unwittingly &#8211; over a frozen lake or two, I decided to catch the train back to my hotel in the centre of Chicago.<\/p>\n<p>I waited on a deserted 57th Street station for nearly an hour, taking in the chilly air and listening to some suitably wintry and melancholic sounds on my MiniDisc player (remember them?!).<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>On the playlist would have been the stunningly beautiful &#8216;Glow&#8217; album by the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Innocence_Mission\" target=\"_blank\">Innocence Missio<\/a>n, &#8216;Closing Time&#8217; by Tom Waits and &#8216;Steve McQueen&#8217; by Prefab Sprout. And probably equally introspective tunes by the likes of The Sundays, The Smiths, Cocteau Twins, Blue Nile, Kate Bush, Radiohead, The Bible and Aztec Camera.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.urban75.org\/photos\/chicago\/images\/chicago-photos-usa-09.jpg\" alt=\"57th Street station, Chicago, winter of '99\" \/><\/p>\n<p>According to <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/57th_Street_%28Metra%29\" target=\"_blank\">Wikipedia<\/a>, the 57th Street Station serves the Metra Electric Line north to Millennium Station  and south to University Park, Blue Island, and South Chicago; and the  South Shore Line to Gary and South Bend, Indiana.<\/p>\n<p>On the Metra Electric  Line, the station is called 55th-56th-57th Street; on the South Shore  Line, it is called 57th Street (Hyde Park).<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s close to the Museum of Science and Industry &#8211; which I&#8217;d visited earlier &#8211; and the University of Chicago, where I&#8217;d grabbed a warming coffee before heading off to the station.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.urban75.org\/photos\/chicago\/images\/chicago-photos-usa-10.jpg\" alt=\"57th Street station, Chicago, winter of '99\" \/><\/p>\n<p>A freight train rumbles through the station, catpured on my little Olympus XA compact 35mm camera. I loved the tumble-down look of this old station, but it&#8217;s all changed now, with the old wooden platforms from the 1920s being replaced with concrete platforms in 2002.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.urban75.org\/photos\/chicago\/images\/chicago-photos-usa-08.jpg\" alt=\"57th Street station, Chicago, winter of '99\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The last photo on my reel of film had this cool ragged red streak down the side. It&#8217;s my favourite picture of the lot!<\/p>\n<p>(*Oh, and to the not-so-many Innocence Mission fans out there &#8211;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.theinnocencemission.com\/home.htm\" target=\"_blank\"> their new album<\/a> is scheduled for a June 2010 release. Can&#8217;t wait!)<\/p>\n<p>[<a href=\"http:\/\/www.urban75.org\/photos\/chicago\/\" target=\"_blank\">More photos of Chicago<\/a>]<br \/>\n[<a href=\"http:\/\/maps.google.com\/maps?ll=41.793354,-87.587476&#038;spn=0.01,0.01&#038;t=m&#038;q=41.793354,-87.587476\" target=\"_blank\">Station location<\/a>]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After a lovely long walk across snow-covered parks and &#8211; unwittingly &#8211; over a frozen lake or two, I decided to catch the train back to my hotel in the &hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6608,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[17,193,15],"tags":[206,1200,1193,207,192],"class_list":["post-1169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-photos","category-places","category-snow","tag-chicago","tag-railways","tag-snow","tag-station","tag-usa"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/chicago-photos-usa-07.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pQI7P-iR","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1169"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1169\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1207,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1169\/revisions\/1207"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}