The assault on the senses is familiar to anyone who ventures into the Chicago Transit Authority’s aging, decrepit subway stations. From the stench of urine that rises up from the stairs to the dirt and graffiti on the vaulted platform ceilings and harsh steel columns, the message of this netherworld is inescapable–and it sure isn’t that getting there is half the fun.
So little wonder that CTA patrons are cheering the renovated Blue Line station at Lake and Wells Streets. It’s clean, bright and durable, with better than average directional signs, and it feels safe besides. A bonus is that the $6.7 million rehab is strikingly handsome. It’s a crisp essay in modernism that may not be top-of-the-line design on the order of Helmut Jahn’s luminous underground platform at O’Hare International Airport, but will do very well, thank you, given what subway riders endure every day.
The good news is that more snappy stations are on the way. A renovated Red Line stop at Roosevelt Road is due to open in October, city transportation officials say, and others along the same line, from Jackson Boulevard to Chicago Avenue, are set to be redone through 1998. If money can be found, the officials hope to give the rest of the downtown Blue Line, of which the Lake and Wells station is a part, a comparable makeover.
It would appear, of course, that the cash-strapped CTA can ill afford the upgrades. But maybe it’s the other way around. The agency, which is losing riders the way the Cubs lose pennants, can’t afford not to spruce up the stations, especially with the federal government picking up most of the tab. The stops, after all, are as much a part of the CTA experience as being stuffed into a rush-hour train. They are gateways that create a first, and often lasting, impression.
The Lake and Wells station is a gateway to the Loop because it is part of the first downtown stop on the Blue Line coming in from O’Hare. Its Wells Street entrances are above the western end of the 500-foot-long platform that is entered on the east from the James R. Thompson Center. The stop is called Clark and Lake. And it is a significant transportation hub because the Thompson Center is a junction of the subway and several elevated train lines.
That the Lake and Wells station has been treated innovatively is due in large part to the influence of the Chicago Department of Transportation, which takes responsibility for the design and construction of downtown CTA stops, though the facilities remain the province of the CTA. The department has tended to favor traditional-looking infrastructure, such as the renovated Roosevelt Road bridge, but of late it has become more adventurous, sponsoring such foward-looking ventures as the streamlined overpass over the Kennedy Expressway at Madison Street.
Here, too, the design looks to the future, though it grows out of the past. In shaping the two above-ground entrances to the station (one on the northeast corner of Lake and Wells, the other on the southeast), architect Thomas Hoepf of Chicago’s Teng & Associates has creatively reinterpreted turn-of-the-century, Michigan Avenue subway canopies.
White-painted, smooth steel tubes rise from cutouts in sleek, gray granite walls. Their upside-down “U” shape subtly echoes the massive, riveted structure that supports the neighboring elevated tracks. A fluidly curving canopy is suspended from the tubes, with rolled steel that braces the columns and a glass roof that’s strong enough to stand on (but don’t try or you’ll get arrested).
Functionally, the entrances represent a major improvement over their canopy-less predecessors, drawing light into stairwells and giving riders a chance to pop open their umbrellas before rain falls on their heads. Their spirits also should be lifted by the design, which is at once familiar and fresh, playing on our memory of old-fashioned subway canopies, but with an entirely new spin.
There is an artful contrast between the weightiness of the entrance walls and the lightness of their steel and glass. Ceramic bands baked on the glass reduce glare and create pleasing shadow patterns. The roughness of the rolled steel saves the entrances from preciousness, a quality that’s undesirable alongside the mighty elevated tracks.
It all beckons you in, which is precisely what gateways are supposed to do. True, the CTA signs atop the uppermost tubes are clunky and one of the corners of the granite walls has been chipped; a rounded edge might have stood up to punishment better. But on the whole, this is superior public architecture, endowing the mundane act of boarding a subway with a sense of ceremony. And it retains a high level as you walk down to the ticket-taker mezzanine level.
Hoepf clad stairwell and mezzanine walls in alternating bands of gray and black granite, hoping to suggest layers of the earth. I have a hunch that the metaphor will be lost on the vast majority of riders, but the quality of the design still comes through.
The sheen of the granite communicates cleanliness and order, in contrast to the impression of dirtiness and disorder most CTA stations convey. A black and gray terrazzo floor continues the color palette of the granite bands, replacing the usual painted concrete. The floor is flecked is with chips of black and white marble, which give the impression of permanence, and quartz, which produces a delightful sparkle. There’s a certain black-tie formality to the black and gray palette, and it’s a vast improvement over the riot of colors you see at some CTA stations.
That it all seems crisp and clean-lined is due to the way the architects designed refinements for the mezzanine and nimbly handled the CTA’s proviso that standard signs and light fixtures be used. A stainless steel wall soffit incorporates fluorescent tubes in a continuous band, while keeping the ceiling free of clutter. And because the architects used black silicone caulk between black granite panels and gray caulk between gray panels, the stone appears to be a series of continuous bands rather than individual pieces. The image is sleek, almost streamlined, and it nicely echoes Jahn’s underground passenger concourses at O’Hare.
More black and gray bands line the escalator walls leading to the platform, which is a considerable improvement upon the CTA norm. That impression comes directly from riders. One said the station used to be the equivalent of a big cement cave, but now it is bright and seems safe, although it still smells like a subway stop. Another, referring to the high quality of finishes, said Lake and Wells felt more like a train station than a subway station.
The platform’s success is explained as much by what you don’t see–or hear–as what you do. Curving steel panels directly above the platform hide electrical conduits in the vaulted ceilings, while their corrugated metal subtly picks up on the corrugated sides of the trains. Soffits hide gutters that drain seeping water from above. Perforated steel panels along the station’s side walls muffle the screeching sound of trains.
Other details make the platform seem cheery and orderly, especially as you see the station from the window of a train. The curving corrugated panels have uplights that brighten alternating sections of the ceiling vaults. A soffit comparable to the one in the mezzanine creates a clean-lined band of light above the main supporting columns. A tactile warning strip lets the blind know that they are at the edge of the platform, while a black-and-gray, resin-topped concrete floor resembles terrazzo and nicely conceals dirt.
The question most riders ask as they come to a platform is: Where do I go? When it comes to this critical task of orienting the rider, the platform is better than a typical CTA station, though hardly an unqualified success. Overhead signs clearly indicate where you should wait on the platform, while smaller, colorful signs affixed to the steel columns point the way to various CTA lines, both above and below ground.
Despite this, some passengers said they found the station confusing, and one CTA official acknowledged that he had trouble finding his way from the platform to the streets he was trying to find.
The platform’s most serious weaknesses are formal rather than functional, but given a choice, CTA riders undoubtedly would prefer it that way. The steel columns, though they are painted a bright blue, join awkwardly with the stainless steel soffit. The same can be said of the overhead signs. The floor, for its part, lacks decoration that would have provided a sense of rhythm, breaking up its considerable length. The strength of the upper two levels of this station is their aesthetic unity; here, that unity comes apart.
Despite these faults, the Lake and Wells station represents a significant step forward in subway station design. It is at once dignified and durable, moving into the future even as it evokes the past. Give the CTA and the Department of Transportation credit for taking a risk that enables modernism to elevate the quality of the public realm. When you treat people with dignity, they tend to respond in kind. So it is in this uplifting of the underground.
