LaSalle Street Cable Car Powerhouse

“At its peak in the 1890s, Chicago's cable car network was the largest in the country, operating thousands of cable cars over 82 miles of track. This powerhouse was an integral part of the city's cable car network. • This building represents an important aspect of Chicago's economic and social heritage.”

“The powerhouse was built for the North Chicago Street Railroad Company, which was the first street railway company organized by Yerkes, who eventually controlled eight separate street railway companies and 250 miles of track in Chicago.”

“Only one other powerhouse-of the 11 built for the system in the late-nineteenth century-survives. The other powerhouse, located at the northwest corner of Jefferson Street and Washington Boulevard, is smaller and has been greatly altered.”

“However, during the 1880s and '90s, the nation's largest cable car network was located in another city-Chicago. The LaSalle Street Cable Car Powerhouse is a rare surviving element of this city's once-extensive transit system.”

“On March 26, 1888, the first cable cars entered downtown Chicago from the North Side through the LaSalle tunnel. Within a few years, the North Chicago Railway Company was transporting around 100,000 commuters daily from as far north as Wrightwood and Lincoln.”

“The powerhouse housed the engines that moved two miles of cable through channels laid in streets on the Near North Side and in the Loop business district. Those cables, in turn, pulled the thousands of cable cars that brought 100,000 workers into downtown Chicago each day.”

“They also were heavy polluters, leaving manure--and often the bodies of horses worked to death-to foul city streets. A solution came in 1873 when Andrew S. Halladie, a California wire manufacturer, invented the cable car as a replacement for the horse cars on San Francisco's notoriously steep streets.”

“Ever the transit innovator, Yerkes oversaw the construction of several subway lines there before his death in 1905. BUILDING CONSTRUCTION AND DESCRIPTION Planning for the LaSalle Street Cable Car Powerhouse began in 1886 when the North Chicago Street Railroad Company received city authority to replace several horse-drawn streetcar lines with cable-drawn lines and began installing cables.”

“By providing the power to pull the cable cars through the LaSalle Street tunnel under the Chicago River, it served as the link between the Loop business district and the North Side.”

“Generations of Chicagoans and visitors have viewed this structure as one of the city's true landmark buildings, due to its longtime restaurant uses from the late 1960s through the 1980s as "Ireland's" and during the 1990s as "Michael Jordan's." Integrity Criteria The integrity of the proposed landmark must be preserved in light of its location, design, setting, materials, workmanship and ability to express its historic community, architectural or aesthetic interest or value.”