Green Line Station 35th-Bronzeville-IIT

In the fall of nineteen fifty-nine, this station could barely handle its job. The Chicago White Sox reached the World Series for the first time in forty years, and the nearest elevated station to Comiskey Park was still Tech-35th—the name of this stop at the time. The subway lines in the expressway median and Sox-35th station did not yet exist.

Fans filled the stairs and both side platforms; the transit authority had to assign police officers to regulate the flow. After the series, the authority closed the unused middle express track and created a single wide island platform in its place. It opened in June nineteen sixty-one.

Sixteen months later, the station caught fire. The fire nearly destroyed the new platform and the old northern one, damaged the concourse, and caught a train while passengers were boarding. The leading car was so badly burned that it had to be written off. Damage was estimated at roughly half a million dollars at the time; service between the neighboring stations was interrupted for four days. Before then, Chicago had not experienced such a major fire on its rapid transit system.

To resume service, employees returned to use the side platform from eighteen ninety-two, which had already been closed, and installed a temporary one on the other side. Then a temporary island platform appeared south of 35th Street, while a permanent one was built to the north. It opened in June nineteen sixty-five. The current platform mostly remains from that construction; the former concourse and the platform built for the fans are no longer here.

Four years later, Sox-35th station took on the crowds traveling to the baseball stadium. This stop was left to serve neighborhood residents and students from the campus across State Street. The institute appeared in its name as early as nineteen forty-nine: the word “Tech” referred to the Illinois Institute of Technology. During the reconstruction of the Green Line in the mid-nineties, the transit authority kept the stop and replaced its former name with 35th-Bronzeville-IIT.

“Bronzeville” was coined by James Gentry, the theater editor of the neighboring Chicago Bee newspaper. He worked to give the neighborhood—which the city press called the “Black Belt” and the “black ghetto”—a respectful name of its own. Publisher Anthony Overton supported the proposal, and in nineteen thirty the newspaper held a contest for the title of “Mayor of Bronzeville.” Later, Gentry moved the contest to the Chicago Defender, where the name spread throughout the neighborhood. Now the word he coined appears on station signs between the street number and the institute abbreviation.