unearthing the remains of chicago's long-abandoned street cable car system

it seems an appropriate follow-up to a recent san francisco visit to write about having dug a cable or street car artifact near illinois and franklin street which will soon enter the bldg. 51 collection. the finding of the railway component coincides, ironically, with having bought greg borzo's publication "chicago cable cars" during my vacation in the bay. his research provided new-found knowledge, and  sure enough, soon after returning to chicago i unearthed an item on the periphery of the very history that borzo outlines. the site of the old track corresponds exactly to a map of the north side cable car lines, which ran to illinois and wells before crossing underneath the chicago river.

the hefty steel bracket is part and parcel of a neglected history in the midwest, of a cable car boom that transformed public transit in chicago and demonstrated the applicability of a rapidly evolving technology for the wider world. though san francisco adopted cable cars almost a decade earlier, and receives inflated credit today for its invention, the more encompassing history would note developments in philadelphia, london and chicago, among other places. in the 1880's, chicago developed the largest cable car system in the world, only to abandon it 25 years later for the electric trolley car. comparatively speaking, chicago created extensive infrastructure where san francisco utilized the technology as a limited, albeit novel, solution to its inclines (though chicago's cable cars had a short lifespan, while san francisco's cable cars are still in use).

prior to cable cars, chicago had the nascent infrastructure for what would be one of the largest streetcar systems in the world. horse-car service began in 1859 and was supplanted by the cable car lines before those were in turn supplanted by the electric trolley in 1906. by 1914, various companies operated a single system known as the chicago surface lines. streetcar service peaked in the 1930's and was phased out in the 1950's.

cable cars were initially regarded with awe -- they impressed the public by moving in a relatively quiet, smooth motion via a mysterious force. on top of this, the cars traveled at an unprecedented 12 miles per hour when first introduced, contributing to the instant draw. during the cable car era (early 1880's-1906), three companies provided service to the city.

in practice the systems functioned by the basic principle that the cars gripped a continuously moving underground cable and could come to a stop by releasing the cable and applying brakes. chicago's structure relied upon a cable comprised of a hemp rope core (eventually injected with hot tar that would lubricate and waterproof it), around which six steel wires were wound; this achieved flexibility that would reduce wear, and handle curves with less rigidity. the longest single cable on the chicago city railway (ccr) was the cottage grove line, measuring 5.3 miles long (new york claimed the longest cable anywhere, measuring  8.3 miles in length). given chicago's winter weather conditions, and natural wear to the machinery, inspection and maintenance were crucial to smooth operation. the city's cable car companies were necessarily a large business, and kept huge reels of various cable on hand to replace worn strands. they contended with the challenge of delivering these to a powerhouse by way of more than a dozen horses pulling enormous wagons.the cable cars relied upon a conduit that ran directly beneath the track, a component that demanded the elaborate groundwork of digging large trenches, filling in depressions and driving piles into the swamp, as well as relocating other systems (gas mains, water pipes, sewer lines etc) in preparation. one of the biggest differences between cable cars and prior methods of transit was that it exploited centralized power generation, rather than requiring each vehicle to provide its own power. chicago had 13 power plants, housing boilers, engines, and the winding machinery that drove the cables. in the end, some of the greatest engineering challenges to making cable cars workable proved to be topographical -- even in a flat terrain, negotiating curved routes and cable car crossings required laborious problem-solving.

after cable cars had been in operation for a few years, riders became disenchanted with the new mode of travel. complaints pertained to the lack of weatherproofing inside the cars, street congestion, and overcrowding, among other things. all of these problems did, however, lead to resolving intractable problems, improving streets and expressways in an indirect way.

the demand created by the world's columbian exposition in 1893, tested the limits of the ccr's capacity, with a spike of one thousand cars in service and a record 700,000 passengers using the cable cars. they were reportedly so packed that throngs of passengers rode on the roofs of the cars, even collapsing a car roof at one point.

the west chicago street railroad (wcsr) did not begin operating cable cars until 1890, which is relatively late in the development of the transit, but became the second-largest cable car company in the country (second only to the ccr). they were met with unusual route challenges, including two troublesome tunnels under the south branch of the chicago river, five of chicago's six cable car crossings, and three loops through congested downtown areas. the wcsr's solution to crossing the river was to build a privately owned tunnel, running under private property 150 feet north of van buren street, between clinton and franklin streets. in fact, a major forerunner that contributed to conditions being conducive for cable cars were the traffic tunnels underneath the chicago river. in 1869, the washington street tunnel was completed (originally the multi-lane tunnel accommodated pedestrians and horse-drawn traffic). by 1884, leaking forced its closure until, in 1888, the west chicago street railroad leased the tunnel to build a vehicle bridge and use the tunnel exclusively for their service. the lasalle street tunnel was the second to be completed in 1871, and was leased in 1888 to the north chicago street railroad. the van buren street tunnel was the third and final to be opened in 1894.

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by the turn of the century, cable cars had begun to fall out of favor. politics and legislation contributed to the demise of the transit system but for the most part it was simply eclipsed by concurrent technologies that had been incubating. electric trolleys were demonstrated to be more economical around 1888, but were not widely implemented until railway lines could be converted and opposition to overhead wires faded.

the most notable extant remnants of chicago's cable car system are two powerhouses-- at lasalle and illinois, and at washington and jefferson streets, respectively. other signs of the long-obsolete infrastructure are visible by the absence of a building; some former powerhouse sites retain the massive underground cable car infrastructure which would need to be removed to make way for new building. in fact much evidence of the bygone cable cars remain hidden underground, since the city and cable car companies never systematically removed these buried components.

the realization of this little known history supports all efforts toward "unearthing chicago" and feeling that there are endless remnants of chicago's nineteenth century past that merit field study, hiding just below a the city's surfaces and facades.