California (2800W/430S)
California Avenue and the Eisenhower Expressway, East Garfield Park

Service Notes:

West-Northwest Route: Congress

Quick Facts:

Address: 430 S. California Avenue
Established: June 22, 1958
Original Line: West-Northwest Route, Congress branch
Previous Names: n/a

Skip-Stop Type:

Station

Rebuilt: n/a
Status: Abandoned

History:

California was nearly identical to every other station built in the Eisenhower Expressway, including an island platform, small station house on California's overpass containing only a ticket booth and turnstiles and a long, enclosed, sloping passageway/ramp connecting the two. A brochure, published by the City of Chicago to commemorate the initiation of service June 22, 1958, describes the stations this way:

Each station platform in the expressway right-of-way is the island type, 600 feet long and canopied throughout its entire length. Supported by structural aluminum columns, the canopy extends beyond the platform edge and over the roofs of cars....

Each street-level station entrance was identified by a large, electrically illuminated sign (since removed from all Congress stations). This type of advertising was far more proactive than anything posted in front of most stations previously, although this may have been a requirement, in part, necessitated by the removal of the station entrance from the surrounding neighborhood and its isolation in the middle of the expressway, coupled with the invisibility of the tracks and trains themselves, hidden in the open cut.

The buildings were small compared to many older stations, about 42 feet long and 21 feet wide, and provided only the most minimal, necessary amenities. Exterior walls were a combination of gray glazed brick and structural glass blocks. Station entrance facades were a combination of aluminum panels, polished plate glass windows, and aluminum framed plate glass doors. The use of a glass front, which provided increased visibility into the station from the street and vice versa was a new concept that would be further explored in the CTA's next generation of median stations in the Kennedy-Dan Ryan project. The station exteriors were largely devoid of the type of ornamentation seen in the previous 50 years of station design, save perhaps for the door handles on all Congress stations, which were molded in the shape of the CTA logo. Recalling that the platform is set between two streets a quarter mile apart, there is a rather long distance that needs to be traversed between the station houses and the platforms in between. Thus, connection between the station houses and platform was achieved using long, enclosed ramps from the back of the station houses to the ends of the platform.

California closed Sunday September 2, 1973, in the same service revision that closed Kostner and Central (also on the Congress Line), Dorchester on the Jackson Park branch, State/Van Buren in the Loop, State on the Englewood branch, and Isabella on the Evanston Line.

The metal supports and aluminum framing of the canopy and side walls on the ramp between the station house and platform were removed in August 2016, salvaged to repair the Paulina entrance ramp at the Illinois Medical District station a mile east, which was damaged in a series of violent storms struck the Chicago area on Sunday evening July 24, 2016. This left only the concrete base of the ramp structure at California.