Ear on Chicago; Unidentified

This is Hugh Hill, speaking to you from the maintenance office of the Chicago Tunnel Company. It's located at 447 East Illinois Street at the North Peer Terminal. We are going to take a ride through the famous Chicago Tunnel, which is about 40 feet below the surface of the streets of Chicago. It's going to be an interesting ride and we want you to stay with us all the way through. Our guides are going to be Fred Schmidt, who is the purchasing agent of this company and Henry J. Sims, who is the superintendent of maintenance. Now, let's take that famous ride aboard the train which goes throughout this fine and wonderful Chicago Tunnel. Elevator is starting to move and probably hear the sounds of it moving down. What's this hole here, Fred, that we're going down through? This is the shaft at the North Peer Terminal building. Big concrete hole in the ground. Yes, sir. I'll thicker those walls, I wonder. 18 inches. Well, now we're going down and it's at a rather rapid rate of speed and we've almost reached the bottom down here and we will be able to see the tunnel in just a moment. Here it is. It was

dark going down the elevator, completely pitch black. But now that we've reached the bottom of the line, we finally hear is the tunnel right in front of us. A 24 inch track running right directly in front of us and behind us, behind us it's kind of dark. Is it going to be dark all through the tunnel, Fred? No, sir. Light it all the way. It was lighted all the way. Well, now you're going to take us for a ride here, I assume? Yes, sir. All right, let's get aboard that little car and where we'll go. Well, we have gotten out of the cars now and here we go. The trip has already started. Fred, we're sitting in a car in the back here which has some seats on it. There's a car in front of us which has some other seats but more like a side seats on a street car whereas these are a little more comfortable, at least they have backs on them. This two car train going down through the tunnel is now making the right turn. What is this two car train being pulled by? What kind of an engine is that? That's a mind type locomotive, it's a Westinghouse K

-11. We've stopped here for a minute, Fred's going to get off the train, looks like he's going to throw a switch back there. Henry Sims, who is a superintendent of maintenance for the Chicago Tunnel Company, is the man that is driving this train and he says we're going to back down the Rush Street drift which at one time was the longest drift in the world. All right, Henry, we're all set, go right ahead. Now we're backing up. I'm sure you've good hearing us as we move along, this tunnel is a very amazing thing indeed. I don't think too many people who even live here in the city of Chicago have heard of the tunnel. And even if they have heard of it, certainly very few people have ever come down here. Now the height of this tunnel is 7 feet 6

inches, it is 6 feet wide and is in the shape of a horseshoe. This tunnel was originally built in 1899 and was finished in the year 1910. I'll tell you a little more about the background and history of the Chicago Tunnel a little bit later. Right now we're going to wait till we get to our next point. We've reached another checkpoint here and Fred has just gotten off the train to throw another switch. What did you say this point was? This is the former, this is the commerce smart now, formerly known as the wholesale groceries. Well, we're 40 feet below the level of the street and this is one of the most eerie sites that you would ever want to see, a long gaping hole reaching through the bowels of the city of Chicago. And as you look down, you can see for, well, hundreds and hundreds of yards and looking into the blackness down there, there are some lights as we go

along and it's fairly well lighted. Here we go again. Tell you some more about it a little bit later. We're continuing to move along here now and we're going east, much straighter we under, Illinois Street. Illinois Street. We're in the moving east under Illinois Street, we just passed the Curtis Candy Company. And as I said, we're 40 feet below ground. So, we saw where the Curtis Candy Company used to have a roller type conveyor, which in which they deposited cartons of candy down into the tunnel, they would come down along series of rollers onto this conveyor, the conveyor belt would then dump the cartons of candy into the little cars on the railroad. And then the railroad would deliver the candy on down through the tunnel to its terminal point. We'll pick up some more a little bit later on.

Right now, we've come to another checkpoint, we've stopped for just a moment while Henry up here is going to throw a switch. Now, I don't know whether you can hear it or not, but there's an echo. Can you hear that? But give me a yell. Good, good loud yell. I don't know if we picked it up or not. But anyway, what I was interested in telling you, besides the part about the echo here, is that at this particular point they throw an electric switch. Now, dead ahead of us is a dead end of Illinois Street, and we can see nothing would blackness that way. To the right is a turn. Now, what does that go over there, Fred? That's the new tunnel to go under the State Street subway. Where are we going that way? No, sir. Which way we're going, Hank? We're going to go east and south. East to this first intersection right here, and south underneath Rush Street, and then we'll make a few turns and cross

on the Deschicago River. All right, let's get going. Well, once again, we've made a stop, and here's another interesting point that I'd like to tell you about. Fred, first of all, tell me the exact spot where we are. I would be beginning of Rush Street drift. What would that be? Rush in about Illinois? No. Rush and Kinsey. All right. Now, right at this point, above our heads, are two tubes, pneumatic tubes. These tubes run from the city press, the famous local coverage bureau, which we have here in the city of Chicago. These tubes, particularly these two particular tubes, run to the Chicago Tribune. How far away is the Tribune from here, Hank? About three blocks. About three blocks. All right. Let's move on then. Now, I want to tell you a little more about the company as we move on down the line. This company is the Chicago Tunnel Company. It was originally the Illinois Tunnel Company.

The company was formed to transport package goods, package freight, which was less than cargo shipments throughout the city. That was about 1912. Now, the openings to the tunnel go to freight houses throughout the city. And all of the freight, if taken up into the freight houses on elevators, out of the tunnel. 40 feet below ground is where we're located now. But, when this tunnel runs under the Chicago River, it goes down to a depth of 52 feet. The company now hauls cinders and debris from look buildings. And they dump it at grand avenue and the river. They have 250 of these cars. And they are pulled by electric locomotives. The same kind of an electric locomotive that is used in a coal mine. We've stopped once again. What does this point, Henry? We're underneath the Chicago River at

this very point. Are we down to 52 feet now? This is 49 feet down below street level in the city of Chicago. I see. All right, a few care, too. Just go right ahead, Henry, you know. I'll talk for a little while until we get to a point where we're going to stop again. Originally, the tunnel system throughout the city of Chicago had 62 miles of track. Now it is reduced to 48 and 310 miles. I'm going to tell you all of the dimensions of the tunnel itself. The boundary is in just a moment when we stop again. I'm afraid the noise is a little bit too much right now. Once again, we've stopped and we've reached the point directly below, Randolph and Michigan, one of the busiest corners in the city of Chicago. That's above us about 49 feet. We are way down here in the Chicago tunnel. Something that is, to me, has been the most fantastic trip I've ever been on. To

think that you can ride around 49 feet below street level in Chicago to travel underneath the Chicago River for a while, and then move underneath Chicago at Randolph and Michigan. And just to our right here is the Illinois Central Tunnel. Did you have the Illinois Central as a customer at one time here, Fred? Yes, we still do. Well, they're still your customers. In other words, they deliver some freight or whatever they have to deliver down here to this particular location. That's right. Just above us back here, Fred, were some sort of iron grading. Now, what did you say that was? The ribs that held the cables, the old telephone cables. Is that what that was? That's what it is, yes. I don't know if there's any up ahead of us. In other words, this tunnel, as we said earlier, was originally constructed to hold telephone cables which would go out throughout the city of Chicago. The city of Chicago at that time, of course, in 1899,

wasn't nearly as big as it is today, and the cables didn't have to go so far. But this was the purpose of this tunnel. And now we can see where the ribs, the iron ribs, which held those cables were located. They're not all together here, but at least part of them, part of the cables are. Okay, you ready? Hold on. You want to say something about this area? Go right ahead. Yeah, what is it? Yes, I felt that there's a lot more air here than there was. There's a lot of air here. This is a very well ventilated tunnel. But right now, we've got, oh, maybe a 15 -mile per hour gale coming at us. They're drawing air out of the tunnel to cool the Illinois Central Suburban Station. Is that right? That's what this shaft is. The temperature down here is constant, isn't it, Fred? Yes, 55 degrees the air round. Let's be a comfortable place in the summertime. Very comfortable. Well, it's not too bad right now. We ready to move on? Go right ahead.

We'll talk to you again in just a moment. Once again, we have made a stop. We have been moving south directly under Michigan Avenue. One thing I wanted to point out to you, while Fred is changing, or rather while Hank is changing a switch up here, one thing that I wanted to mention is the fact that the tunnel runs directly under the middle of the street. And this is running directly under the middle of Michigan Avenue. Hank, how far away are we from the Palmer House? We were going to stop there. About three and a half blocks. About three and a half blocks. And it'll take us just a few moments to get there. So that'll be, will that be our next stop? Yeah. All right, we'll wait until we get to the Palmer House for our next stop. We have now arrived at the Palmer House. As I told you,

we were coming down south on Michigan Avenue, underneath Michigan Avenue. And when we reached Adams, we turned right. And we went up to Wabash, and then turned north on Wabash, and now have arrived at the Palmer House. Actually, we're not going to get off here. I don't know whether we had originally planned to or not. Fred, what can we see here if we did get off the train? Well, we'd go right into the Palmer House engine room. That's right over here in front of us, isn't it? Yes, sir. Well, actually, we're going to move on. But before we do, I wanted to tell you a little bit more about the tunnel before the noise starts here, again, as the train pulls away. This tunnel runs from Erie Street on the north to 16th Street on the south, Michigan Avenue on the east, and Green Street on the west. Green Street, as you might know, is 900 west. So that covers a pretty good area. And there are 48 and 3 -10 miles of track. We're going to move on now. What's our next stop, Hank? Underneath

state and Dearborn Street subways. On Randolph. Our underneath Randolph would be a better way to put it. All right, let's move along into this subterranean railroad system we have here. A fabulous tunnel, which moves continuously throughout Chicago's Blue Barrier. We've arrived at Madison and Wabash, and there is a telephone here, and while Hank is making a phone call to the office for a check, we'd like to talk to Fred just a little bit about the tunnel. Now, I know that I had the sensation of wondering what I was getting into when we decided to come down into the tunnel and take a ride to do the story of this famous tunnel beneath Chicago Street level. And for those people who are still wondering what it looks like, it looks like this. I'll try to describe it as best I can. Once again, I'll give you the dimensions. The tunnel is seven feet six inches high, and it is six feet wide. It is in the shape of a horseshoe. Now, on the either side of us, of course, are the concrete walls,

and then it comes to that top of the horseshoe right above us. At the bottom of it, bottom are the tracks, 24 inches wide, and then on either side of the track is a little more area, which runs out to the walls of the tunnel. The tunnel walls are a little bit blackened now. The concrete has some charred marks on it, and every once in a while, you see some chalk marks where they will indicate what street you're on or where you're coming to, or once in a while there are some numbers. Fred, one thing I wanted to know, who owns the Chicago tunnel? The city of Chicago. We lease it from them under a franchise. There was at the city of Chicago, who originally built a tunnel? No, George W. Jackson was the original builder. Well, I know, but the Chicago, the city of Chicago must have... What's going on? The building is always coming along with a train. Coming up, Michigan Avenue? The very long pass. They're going along with us. Oh, I see. There's a building

crew moving along Madison Avenue. Then other people besides your company uses this tunnel. Is that right? Oh, where the only ones use it. Well, what about the mandals that we just heard about the mandals? Well, we service their building like other buildings in the loop. We go in and take out their debris and senders. Now, this crew that he's talking about moving along Madison, they're going west on Madison, and then they're going to go north on Wabash. I guess they're going to turn right here. What are they doing? They just have taken care of mandal brothers. And now they're moving out there. They're taking out the loaded cars and then they put in some empties. Well, now getting back to the original construction of this tunnel, the city of Chicago, of course, owns the land and always has on the land, underneath the streets, and thereby owns the tunnel, right? That's right. And who did you say otherwise that constructed it? George W. Jackson. And what was he, an engineer? He was an engineer. And

he built it for the telephone company. That is, that was the original purpose. That was the original purpose. Hank has just walked up here while we're waiting for that crew to make its switch. I wanted to ask him just a couple of questions. Hank, you seem to know this tunnel very well. Well, I sure had been down here long enough. How many years have you been with the company? 33. 33 years you've been driving a truck down here or a train? Well, practically. You're the supervisor of maintenance now. That's right. Or superintendent, let me get it straight. Well, now, what did you do back in the early days? Did you always drive the train like this? No. And 1923 I was winding armatures for these locomotives. And then what? I rose to Foreman. And in 1948, when the general Foreman retired, I took his position. And when Jack Kohler in 1950 retired because of illness, I also took over his position,

Foreman of maintenance in the tunnel. Hank, do many people question you about your work down here in the tunnel? Yes, quite a few, whenever I tell him that I work for the tunnel. Do many people really understand what this tunnel is? And they have no conception of what it's all about. Well, you'd almost have to come down here and take a ride in the tunnel to really understand, wouldn't you? To understand and realize it's scope, you certainly would. The people of Chicago really don't realize that it's even here, I don't think. Well, from the articles in the paper, a few should know now. Yes, you've been written up quite a few times. We have. This is the first time we've ever taken a radio station through? 1920. I drove the train, but took a gene core of the PASA news when they took the moving pictures down here. Well, I don't... Have you ever had a radio station take our actual trip and record the entire trip? No, I believe this is the... Is this the first time? Well, it's the first time for me. I can tell you that. It's the first time for me, too. Well,

we're enjoying it very much, Hank. If you'd like to go up there, I think we're about ready to move ahead, why? We'll go on. All right, we'll wait till the next checkpoint and then we'll do some more recording. We have now reached the spot where Marshall Fields has an outlet to the tunnel. What is right in through that hole in the wall there, Fred? That's Charlie wire going in up to the door there, building the boiler room and engine room. You have Marshall Fields as a customer here, too, then? Yes, sir. I see. Okay, let's move on then. Oh, Hank's got to throw a switch. I can hear a trip hammer. Is that up on street level? You know? Now, that's down in Marshall Fields basement. Sounds as if they're doing some building or something. I am ads and maybe some remodeling. Well, Hank is up there throwing another switch. There are a number of switches to be thrown, as you

can well imagine. We're still moving north on Wabash, right? Right. So we've made a lot of turns and a lot of switches have to be thrown because there are other cars moving back and forth down here in the tunnel. And they throw switches to go north or south or east or west, depending on what their particular job is at the moment. Ours is merely to take a ride and see as sightseers would, how the tunnel is operated and where it goes and what it looks like. We're trying as best we can. Here we go. We're trying as best we can to describe what we see as we move along. We have just turned north on Randolph Street. And we are going to move. We're turned west on Randolph Street. I beg your pardon. We're going to move west on Randolph Street to Franklin Street. At which time we will move north on Franklin to the Kinsey. To Kinsey, we will take point east and move on back towards the terminal

where we started our trip. What are these tubes up above our head here? There's no far north paper tubes to the daily nose and times building. Now Fred, I know that this is only one way traffic, but here on Randolph Street it's two way traffic, right? The reason for that is this is no tunnel. When was this one built, you know? In 1940. This was built underpass to Subway. We're under the Subway right now. Subway is right above us. I see. In other words, this was a new tunnel, so therefore you could have two way traffic. One going one way on this tunnel and one going the other way on the other tunnel. Where is the other tunnel? Well, this is two way traffic. They both use this one section to travel east and west. For that purpose, he put on the signal at Royal Bash and Randolph. The underneath one more coming east that we were coming west. And

anyone coming east will stay at that point until we get out of this section. No, I told you, I said a little while ago that it's very well ventilated down here. And also, Fred, there's very little waters. A bunch of the while you run across a little pool of water, but not very often. You're going to have much trouble from water. Not very much, except in the summer there's a little more water down here because of seapage. You have any trouble from animals coming out here. There aren't any animals down here. There's nothing for an animal to get down here. No stray dogs or cats starting. No rodents, anything like that. Never seen one. All right, we're going to move on now and we'll talk to you some more at the next stop point. Hey, it's just stopped again here to throw another switch. And I want to tell you that we're at the City Hall and County Building. We're directly below

Randolph and Clark Streets. Now, once again, we have a long series of tubes. There are many, many more tubes here now than we saw a little while ago. We're about ready to pull out again, but Fred, what are these tubes? These are newspaper tubes running into every newspaper in the city. And they use those tubes to relay press releases and information stories from city press to their newsroom. Is that right? That is right. Okay, let's move on. Pump water. Just here to our left is a pump rope and his Hank was just saying, are they pumped seepage out of the tunnel? All right, we'll talk to you just a little bit later now. We are directly below the city press now and here is where the tubes go up. As we have seen them, they have been all horizontal running along the length of the tunnel. But here they go up into the city press and we can count them. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten on this side. And one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight on the other side, all going up. And then

out of the hole here, down the tunnel to our left and down the tunnel to our right. Going to the newspapers, now to explain a little bit further, the city press has reporters all over the city. They phone in their stories. The stories are typed up at the city press. And then put into these pneumatic tubes and the tubes shoot them directly to the newspaper offices where the newspapers then get the copy from which they print their stories. Okay, let's move on. We just turned north on Franklin Street off of Randolph. And now we have gone underneath the Chicago River and have stopped at the merchandise mart. They have an air shaft directly to our left going up into the merchandise mart. Now back there, here behind us, all about 50 yards. What did you say that was back there, Hank? And the old northwestern inbound freighthouse. The old northwestern inbound freighthouse. And so now we're moving north on Franklin and we'll go to where? To the outbound

freighthouse. And then we'll turn right on Kinsey to Dearborn. And then we're on Dearborn. Dearborn will turn left and go north to Illinois. Go north on Dearborn to Illinois. And Illinois will take directly in each that is to the north here. We'll go on Illinois from Dearborn to the North Peer Terminal. I see. All right, we're leaving the merchandise mart right now. We are now going east on Illinois Street. Last time we talked to you was at the merchandise mart and we were going north. We went north to Kinsey and then turned to our right on Kinsey. We've stopped for a moment now. Then we went to Dearborn and turned left and went up to Illinois Street. Illinois Street will take us back to the North Peer Terminal where we started our trip. As a matter of fact, just a moment ago, we reached the Rush Street drift. Now that's the Chicago River drift, isn't it Fred? That's right. And that's where we actually started our first checkpoint. As

you'll recall, if you started listening at the beginning of the broadcast, we went down into the Chicago Tunnel on an elevator. Down into the car, the car left the North Peer Terminal and backed up to the Rush Street drift. Then we pulled out and moved down Michigan Avenue and went down south on Michigan Avenue to Adams. And then we started our tour of the Lou Berria. Now we are arriving back at the North Peer Terminal. We arrive there. We'll talk to Fred just briefly. We've arrived back now to the North Terminal and we are off of the train and aboard the elevator. This is where we started our trip with the elevator coming down and now we're on the elevator going back up to the maintenance office. Fred, this is the most fabulous thing I've ever encountered in my life. It's virtually unbelievable. And as Hank said a moment ago, you would have to see it to

believe it. To think that a series of tunnels run throughout the city of Chicago, and four young men here have just taken a trip throughout this tunnel. We've actually ridden along this small railroad track beneath the city, 45 feet beneath the city, through all of these busy intersections that are just above us, knowing that above us there are thousands and thousands and thousands of people walking and working and going through their daily lives. And here we are, the four of us, just below them. And we are the only four people that I saw down below. It's really an amazing experience. We have now finished it. We have arrived back. The elevator has stopped and we're ready to walk off back to the maintenance shop. We want to thank you, Fred, and Hank, for taking us on this tour. It's really been an interesting experience. It was wonderful having you down there. I enjoyed every minute of it with you. And I'm sure that you'll have a nice story for us. Well, I'm sure we have. And that's the story of the Chicago Tunnel Company. This is Hugh Hill

speaking. Thank you.