Grand was a rapid transit station on the Chicago "L" Logan Square branch, one of the several branches of the Metropolitan West Side Elevated Railroad. Located on Grand Avenue, the station was constructed by the Metropolitan in the early 1890s and began service on May 6, 1895.
The Metropolitan, one of four companies that would build what became the Chicago "L", had many branches to serve Chicago's west side, including the Logan Square branch on which Grand lay. With some interruptions and financial issues, it operated these lines until 1911, when it handed operations to Chicago Elevated Railways, and formally merged into the Chicago Rapid Transit Company (CRT) in 1924. The "L" was taken over by the publicly-held Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) in 1947.
A subway had been planned since the late 1930s to reach downtown in a more direct way than the portion of the Logan Square branch where Grand stood. This subway was originally intended to supplement the old elevated Logan Square branch, but the CTA sought to simplify its routing and saw no need for the old branch's continued existence. The subway opened on February 25, 1951, with a station of its own on Grand Avenue; the old Grand station was then closed along with the others on the affected part of the branch. The station and its trackage remained in non-revenue service until it was demolished and the property sold off in 1964.
Grand was typical of the Metropolitan's stations, with two wooden side platforms and a brick station house at street level. For most of its existence it connected with a streetcar route that reached Navy Pier; both the "L" and streetcar had owl service. After the late 1910s it was also the lowest-ridership station on the Logan Square branch, and one of the least-patronized on the entire "L".
History
The Metropolitan West Side Elevated Railroad Company was granted a 50-year franchise by the Chicago City Council on April 7, 1892, and began securing right of way shortly thereafter. As designed, the Metropolitan's operations would comprise a main line that went west from downtown to Marshfield, where three branchesone northwest to Logan Square, one due west to Garfield Park, and one southwest to Douglas Parkwould diverge and serve various parts of Chicago's west side. A further branch to Humboldt Park would proceed due west from the Logan Square branch just past Robey Street. Unlike the competing South Side and Lake Street Elevateds, the Metropolitan never used steam traction; although intending to and building much of its structure with locomotives in mind, it decided in May 1894 to have electrified tracks instead, opening as the first revenue electric elevated railroad in the United States. The Metropolitan's tracks on the Logan Square branch were finished up to Robey by the middle of October 1894, and were given power in April 1895 for test and inspection runs. The Metropolitan began service at 6 a.m. on Monday, May 6, 1895, between Robey on the Logan Square branch and Canal on the main line. Eleven stations opened that day, one of which was on Grand Avenue.
The Metropolitan's lines were originally operated by the West Side Construction Company, which had been responsible for constructing them, and would be transferred to the Metropolitan on October 6, 1896. The backers and officers of the two companies were largely identical, however, so this transfer of ownership was nominal. The expenses incurred in constructing the Metropolitan's vast trackage would come back to haunt the company, which entered receivership in 1897; the similarly-named Metropolitan West Side Elevated Railway Company was organized in January 1899 and assumed operations on February 3 of that year. The new Metropolitan, along with the other companies operating "L" lines in Chicago, became a part of the Chicago Elevated Railways (CER) trust on July 1, 1911. CER acted as a de facto holding company for the "L"unifying its operations, instituting the same management across the companies, and instituting free transfers between the lines starting in 1913but kept the underlying companies intact. This continued until the companies were formally merged into the single Chicago Rapid Transit Company (CRT), which assumed operations on January 9; the former Metropolitan was designated the Metropolitan Division of the CRT for administrative purposes. Although municipal ownership of transit had been a hotly-contested issue for half a century, the publicly-owned Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) would not be created until 1945, or assume operation of the "L" until October 1, 1947.
