The Bloomingdale Line was originally constructed in 1873 by the Chicago and Pacific Railroad Company as part of the 36-mile (58 km) Elgin subdivision from Halsted Street in Chicago to the suburb of Elgin, Illinois.
The railroad was elevated approximately twenty feet in the 1910s as result of a city ordinance aimed at reducing pedestrian fatalities at grade crossings. The line had been a street running railway within Bloomingdale Avenue, an east-west street running at 1800 north on Chicago's grid; creating the embankment reduced Bloomingdale Avenue's width in most cases. Steel-reinforced concrete embankment walls line the right-of-way and there are 38 viaducts built into the railroad to accommodate cross traffic from the street grid. Many of the viaducts are currently in need of repair.
The line was used for both passenger and freight trains and served several local industrial businesses, including a Schwinn Bicycle Company warehouse. The Bloomingdale Line was primarily used to reach the Lakewood Branch and industrial district on Goose Island.
The City of Chicago first investigated converting the Bloomingdale Line into a greenway in a 1997 bicycle facilities plan, but it remained a freight line with occasional service for several more years. The City and community reintroduced the greenway concept as part of the Logan Square Open Space Plan in 2002-2004. This plan proposes a linear park or greenway with public access ramps every six to nine blocks. At the east end, a trailhead would be created at the Chicago River and on the west end another trailhead would be integrated into the Logan Square YMCA campus.
A grassroots, non-profit organization, Friends of the Bloomingdale Trail (FBT), was formed in 2003 to be the focal point for advocacy and community involvement in the conversion project. FBT has partnered with the City and The Trust for Public Land, a national land conservation group, in a collaborative that will lead the project management, design, and development of the park.
Similar elevated greenway projects include:
The High Line, New York City
Promenade Plantée, Paris
My concept for the Bloomingdale Line was to blur the public and private boundaries of the linear park. In investigating existing conditions and uses of the Bloomingdale Line and the immediately adjacent buildings, I noticed that some private properties that abutted the Bloomingdale Line started delineating this future public space as their private backyard. I found this interesting and wanted to use this idea of the private and public comingling. Over the first five years of the Bloomingdale Line Linear Park, it would need to bioremediate the soil and develop the public park paths and start adding the landscaping. Areas of extreme soil contamination of arsenic and other toxic chemicals will be bioremediated on other parts of the park (shuffling toxic soil mitigation where development is not occuring). Areas with existing public parks, open space, and/or existing high densities of traffic will have the Bloomingdale Line’s retaining wall carved down to grade to make greater accessibility to the public (public access at existing public areas). As the park is being developed and rehabilitated, the closest abutted buildings to the site (commercial, apartment buildings, and single family homes in that order) will be appropriated by the City of Chicago, much like the Canadian Pacific Railroad donated or sold the Bloomingdale property. This partial and/or whole appropriated property will then be recategorized in its use whether it be public seating areas, private areas, or new commercial spaces that will cater to the new use of the Bloomingdale Line as a public park. Any privatizing of the Bloomingdale Line Park is property of the immediate neighborhood/block as a community shared park area. This gives the immediate neighborhood more personal attachment, ownership, and sense of responsibility to this nearby park while they keep an open public pathway for the bicycles and pedestrians, thus fullfilling the needs of the nearby private residents/users and greater public that will come to use the park.
Illinois Institute of Technology, fall, 2006
The railroad was elevated approximately twenty feet in the 1910s as result of a city ordinance aimed at reducing pedestrian fatalities at grade crossings. The line had been a street running railway within Bloomingdale Avenue, an east-west street running at 1800 north on Chicago's grid; creating the embankment reduced Bloomingdale Avenue's width in most cases. Steel-reinforced concrete embankment walls line the right-of-way and there are 38 viaducts built into the railroad to accommodate cross traffic from the street grid. Many of the viaducts are currently in need of repair.
The line was used for both passenger and freight trains and served several local industrial businesses, including a Schwinn Bicycle Company warehouse. The Bloomingdale Line was primarily used to reach the Lakewood Branch and industrial district on Goose Island.
The City of Chicago first investigated converting the Bloomingdale Line into a greenway in a 1997 bicycle facilities plan, but it remained a freight line with occasional service for several more years. The City and community reintroduced the greenway concept as part of the Logan Square Open Space Plan in 2002-2004. This plan proposes a linear park or greenway with public access ramps every six to nine blocks. At the east end, a trailhead would be created at the Chicago River and on the west end another trailhead would be integrated into the Logan Square YMCA campus.
A grassroots, non-profit organization, Friends of the Bloomingdale Trail (FBT), was formed in 2003 to be the focal point for advocacy and community involvement in the conversion project. FBT has partnered with the City and The Trust for Public Land, a national land conservation group, in a collaborative that will lead the project management, design, and development of the park.
Similar elevated greenway projects include:
The High Line, New York City
Promenade Plantée, Paris
My concept for the Bloomingdale Line was to blur the public and private boundaries of the linear park. In investigating existing conditions and uses of the Bloomingdale Line and the immediately adjacent buildings, I noticed that some private properties that abutted the Bloomingdale Line started delineating this future public space as their private backyard. I found this interesting and wanted to use this idea of the private and public comingling. Over the first five years of the Bloomingdale Line Linear Park, it would need to bioremediate the soil and develop the public park paths and start adding the landscaping. Areas of extreme soil contamination of arsenic and other toxic chemicals will be bioremediated on other parts of the park (shuffling toxic soil mitigation where development is not occuring). Areas with existing public parks, open space, and/or existing high densities of traffic will have the Bloomingdale Line’s retaining wall carved down to grade to make greater accessibility to the public (public access at existing public areas). As the park is being developed and rehabilitated, the closest abutted buildings to the site (commercial, apartment buildings, and single family homes in that order) will be appropriated by the City of Chicago, much like the Canadian Pacific Railroad donated or sold the Bloomingdale property. This partial and/or whole appropriated property will then be recategorized in its use whether it be public seating areas, private areas, or new commercial spaces that will cater to the new use of the Bloomingdale Line as a public park. Any privatizing of the Bloomingdale Line Park is property of the immediate neighborhood/block as a community shared park area. This gives the immediate neighborhood more personal attachment, ownership, and sense of responsibility to this nearby park while they keep an open public pathway for the bicycles and pedestrians, thus fullfilling the needs of the nearby private residents/users and greater public that will come to use the park.
Illinois Institute of Technology, fall, 2006