Lake Street Transfer

The Lake Street Elevated was one of four companies that formed the nucleus of the Chicago "L". It had incorporated in 1888 and commenced operations on November 6, 1893. Stations were regularly spaced across the route and included one on Wood Street.[1]

The Wood station was designed in a Queen Anne style, similar to the other stations on the route and the surviving station houses at Ashland.[1]

The station house at California in 2011; the original Metropolitan station house was of a similar design.

The Metropolitan West Side Elevated Railroad, another founding company of the Chicago "L", opened a station at Lake Street on May 6, 1895, alongside the other stations of its Logan Square Branch. It was designed similarly to those stations, surviving examples of which are California and Damen; its station house was located on the north side of Lake Street. Since the station crossed the pre-existing Lake Street Elevated, its tracks and platforms were much higher than elsewhere on the "L".[2]

In 1911, the four companies operating the "L" – the Lake Street Elevated and Metropolitan Elevated, as well as the South Side Elevated Railroad and North Side Elevated Railroad – merged operations under the aegis of Chicago Elevated Railways (CER). The CER instituted full integration of cross-town service on the "L" and free transfers between the lines in 1913, having been mandated to do so by the Chicago City Council. As part of the same ordinance, the Lake Street Elevated was required to build a transfer station underneath the Metropolitan's Lake station. Deciding that having two stations so close together was not worth it, it decided to close Wood station.[1][2]

Free transfers commenced on November 3, 1913, but the Lake Street Elevated's new station was not finished at that point. As an interim measure, "walking" transfers between Wood station and the Lake Street Transfer were issued. By mid-November, the Lake Street Elevated's station was complete, and the Wood station was closed. The final station was double-decked, with platforms for both the Lake Street route and the Metropolitan route.[2] By 1917, a new station house on the south side of Lake Street was constructed, and the Metropolitan's original station house was used for storage. Access to the station was through stairwells from the station house to the Lake Street platforms, which had additional stairways to connect to the Metropolitan platforms.[2]

Skip-stop on the Chicago "L" began as an experiment on the Lake Street Elevated on April 5, 1948; stations in between Pulaski and the Loop, exclusive, were assigned either "A" or "B" stations and were serviced by the equivalent "A" or "B" trains during weekdays. Despite being in this area, Lake Street Transfer was exempt from this system and continued to be serviced by all Lake Street Elevated trains.[3] The Logan Square branch would not begin skip-stop until the opening of the Dearborn Street Subway and the closing of the transfer in 1951.[4]

The Dearborn Street Subway, which provided a more direct connection from Logan Square to downtown, opened on February 25, 1951, and Lake Street Transfer was concomitantly closed. In 1954, the Metropolitan's tracks at the site were replaced by a direct junction with the Lake Street tracks, a connection that would be dubbed the Paulina Connector, to provide temporary service to the Loop for the Douglas Branch during the construction of the Congress Line. After the Congress Line was completed in 1958, the Paulina Connector would remain standing but not enter revenue service until the 2006 opening of the Pink Line. Wooden material from closed stations on the Paulina Connector, including Lake Street Transfer, was removed in the late 1950s to mitigate fire hazards, as were the lowest flights of stairs to deter trespassing, but the rest of the station would remain until the mid-to-late 1960s.[2][5]