A Chicago Neighborhood Slowly Disintegrates
An excerpt from a recent article in TELECOM Digest, October 29, afternoon edition:
Pat,
I recall you mentioning the Wabash office ("The Wabash Cannonball")being SxS at one time. Which part of the city did that serve, and doyou have any idea when it was replaced?
All info will be passed on to help reconcile old memories!
Thanks,
-Paul.
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The 'Wabash CannonBall' a/k/a Wabash central office was one of the first, if not the first, central offices in Chicago, dating from the early 1900's; it served part of the downtown business district, which in those days (early 1900's, late1800's) was a wee bit south of the present 'downtown' area; 'downtown'tended to be more around Harrison/Van Buren Streets (east/west streets) and Wabash Avenue. Chicago, after the Great Fire, tended to build more to the north. The 'numbered' streets as a result are all southside, east/west streets. Northside streets going east/west are all 'named' rather than 'numbered'. Wabash was a panel office in the very old days; all I know for sure was that Wabash cut over in one large sweep from (mostly) panel with a bit of SxS tossed in to ESS in 1973 or 74. No wholesale SxS, nocrossbar, just straight to ESS. The Wabash central office is physically now (and as far back as I can remember) at 65 East CongressParkway (corner of Wabash Avenue and Congress).
On the far north side of the city, the EDGewater central office (so named because Lake Michigan at one point lapped at its doorstep until the lake was gradually filled in a little [at first with debris from the Great Fire, then later as city planners 'moved things around a little'] and the lake got shoved a few feet east on most of the northside). EDGewater CO consists of several exchanges; the ones I am familiar with are EDGewater (773-334), UPTown (773-878), LOngbeach-1(773-561), SUnnyside-4 (773-784), and maybe others. Although Edgewaterdates back almost to the earliest of times as well, and is in theUptown neighborhood, for whatever reason it mostly progressed over theyears from panel through step by step to crossbar, and when it was'cut' fairly early on (memory tells me it was 1976-77) one exchange there stood out like a sore thumb. City of Chicago was in the processof getting 911 service going everywhere in the city, except they raninto some hassles with LOngbeach-1. Everyone got 911 service exceptthe subscribers with Longbeach numbers (by then it was 312-561). Phonebook said '561 subscribers must continue to dial POlice-5-1313 andFIre-7-1313.' And that went on for a few months until telco was ableto successfully bring around Longbeach-1. And we were getting 'zero-plus' dialing about the same time; Longbeach was left out of that for a fewmonths also; _they_ had to dial '0' operator and ask for the longdistance numbers they wanted. Longbeach also had _no_ payhones in it;and the 9xxx series of numbers were given to 'regular subscribers'where normally numbers of that type (9xxx) _on other exchanges_ were often as not given over to payphones.
A bit of non-telecom history for a few minutes here; the Uptown neighborhood in Chicago _used to be_ -- like most of Chicago -- a very elegant, very rich white neighborhood. If you had an UPTown or EDGewater phone number, you lived somewhere between Ashland Avenue on the west, Lake Michigan on the east, Montrose Avenue on the south and FosterAvenue on the north. (I think those are still the boundaries). This is a neighborhood which, in the 1920-30's had the very elegant UptownTheatre (3000 plus seats) at Lawrence and Broadway, the RivieraTheatre a few doors south, the Aragon Ballroom, the Edgewater BeachHotel (_directly_ on the lakefront with its elegant mile-long boardwalk)Edgewater Hospital, Radio station WEBH (as in *E*dgewater *B*each *H*otel) and of course, Uptown Station, the very elegant train stop whichserved the Chicago, North Shore and Milwaukee Electric Railroad, oneof Samuel Insull's properties which was located at Wilson Street andBroadway, in the heart of beautiful Uptown, a shopping district only second in glamor to 63rd Street and Ashland in the Englewood area. Its all gone today. Between the first and second wars, a nice neighborhood for Jewish people; the Uptown neighborhood began going sour when the Jews moved out (going more north toward Evanston/Skokie) and poorer white people (known in street parlance as 'white trash' or 'hillbillies' [by and large people from Appalachia] moved in. The hillbillies stayed around through the1980's -- even a few still today -- but mostly they all ran off in dread and terror when the blacks started moving in around 1980 or so. Now today predominently black (although I remember the hillbilly population of Uptown quite well and in the early days of the hillbillypeople, also the gay population which lived there.) Uptown Station is still there, but mostly subdivided into small store fronts with one tiny entrance going direct to the train tracks where CTA has rechristened the whole thing 'Wilson Avenue CTA station', and since the CTA is a notorious slumlord -- they do _not_ maintain their property in any way, shape or form -- only when ordered to do so and fined bybuilding inspectors - the Uptown Station -- what remains of it as a train depot -- is a total dump, and very filthy. Uptown is now a 'dumping ground' by social service agencies looking to house hoardes of mentally ill people, ex-felons, drug addicts, etc. Quite a change from the Uptown I remember even in the 1960's. Most people do not even remember the North Shore Line nor Uptown Station. Very sad.
Pat,
I recall you mentioning the Wabash office ("The Wabash Cannonball")being SxS at one time. Which part of the city did that serve, and doyou have any idea when it was replaced?
All info will be passed on to help reconcile old memories!
Thanks,
-Paul.
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The 'Wabash CannonBall' a/k/a Wabash central office was one of the first, if not the first, central offices in Chicago, dating from the early 1900's; it served part of the downtown business district, which in those days (early 1900's, late1800's) was a wee bit south of the present 'downtown' area; 'downtown'tended to be more around Harrison/Van Buren Streets (east/west streets) and Wabash Avenue. Chicago, after the Great Fire, tended to build more to the north. The 'numbered' streets as a result are all southside, east/west streets. Northside streets going east/west are all 'named' rather than 'numbered'. Wabash was a panel office in the very old days; all I know for sure was that Wabash cut over in one large sweep from (mostly) panel with a bit of SxS tossed in to ESS in 1973 or 74. No wholesale SxS, nocrossbar, just straight to ESS. The Wabash central office is physically now (and as far back as I can remember) at 65 East CongressParkway (corner of Wabash Avenue and Congress).
On the far north side of the city, the EDGewater central office (so named because Lake Michigan at one point lapped at its doorstep until the lake was gradually filled in a little [at first with debris from the Great Fire, then later as city planners 'moved things around a little'] and the lake got shoved a few feet east on most of the northside). EDGewater CO consists of several exchanges; the ones I am familiar with are EDGewater (773-334), UPTown (773-878), LOngbeach-1(773-561), SUnnyside-4 (773-784), and maybe others. Although Edgewaterdates back almost to the earliest of times as well, and is in theUptown neighborhood, for whatever reason it mostly progressed over theyears from panel through step by step to crossbar, and when it was'cut' fairly early on (memory tells me it was 1976-77) one exchange there stood out like a sore thumb. City of Chicago was in the processof getting 911 service going everywhere in the city, except they raninto some hassles with LOngbeach-1. Everyone got 911 service exceptthe subscribers with Longbeach numbers (by then it was 312-561). Phonebook said '561 subscribers must continue to dial POlice-5-1313 andFIre-7-1313.' And that went on for a few months until telco was ableto successfully bring around Longbeach-1. And we were getting 'zero-plus' dialing about the same time; Longbeach was left out of that for a fewmonths also; _they_ had to dial '0' operator and ask for the longdistance numbers they wanted. Longbeach also had _no_ payhones in it;and the 9xxx series of numbers were given to 'regular subscribers'where normally numbers of that type (9xxx) _on other exchanges_ were often as not given over to payphones.
A bit of non-telecom history for a few minutes here; the Uptown neighborhood in Chicago _used to be_ -- like most of Chicago -- a very elegant, very rich white neighborhood. If you had an UPTown or EDGewater phone number, you lived somewhere between Ashland Avenue on the west, Lake Michigan on the east, Montrose Avenue on the south and FosterAvenue on the north. (I think those are still the boundaries). This is a neighborhood which, in the 1920-30's had the very elegant UptownTheatre (3000 plus seats) at Lawrence and Broadway, the RivieraTheatre a few doors south, the Aragon Ballroom, the Edgewater BeachHotel (_directly_ on the lakefront with its elegant mile-long boardwalk)Edgewater Hospital, Radio station WEBH (as in *E*dgewater *B*each *H*otel) and of course, Uptown Station, the very elegant train stop whichserved the Chicago, North Shore and Milwaukee Electric Railroad, oneof Samuel Insull's properties which was located at Wilson Street andBroadway, in the heart of beautiful Uptown, a shopping district only second in glamor to 63rd Street and Ashland in the Englewood area. Its all gone today. Between the first and second wars, a nice neighborhood for Jewish people; the Uptown neighborhood began going sour when the Jews moved out (going more north toward Evanston/Skokie) and poorer white people (known in street parlance as 'white trash' or 'hillbillies' [by and large people from Appalachia] moved in. The hillbillies stayed around through the1980's -- even a few still today -- but mostly they all ran off in dread and terror when the blacks started moving in around 1980 or so. Now today predominently black (although I remember the hillbilly population of Uptown quite well and in the early days of the hillbillypeople, also the gay population which lived there.) Uptown Station is still there, but mostly subdivided into small store fronts with one tiny entrance going direct to the train tracks where CTA has rechristened the whole thing 'Wilson Avenue CTA station', and since the CTA is a notorious slumlord -- they do _not_ maintain their property in any way, shape or form -- only when ordered to do so and fined bybuilding inspectors - the Uptown Station -- what remains of it as a train depot -- is a total dump, and very filthy. Uptown is now a 'dumping ground' by social service agencies looking to house hoardes of mentally ill people, ex-felons, drug addicts, etc. Quite a change from the Uptown I remember even in the 1960's. Most people do not even remember the North Shore Line nor Uptown Station. Very sad.
posted by Patrick Townson at 5:36 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home