William Dolan

This painting is a departure from some of my work, although compositionally, it remains in the family. It’s an area of the city that has always had small and medium-sized industry. The bridge is from the Metropolitan West Side Elevated Railroad. It was the first electrified rapid transit line in the world and took a circuitous route into Chicago’s Loop. When the Dearborn Street subway opened in 1951, part of the original L structure was torn down. The the skeleton of this bridge over the busy railway along Hubbard Street remains today as a signal bridge. I put it back into service with a modern L car. While the route of the Dearborn Street subway makes more sense, it would be cool if this part of the elevated still existed. A couple of blocks from here was Lake Transfer, where the Met crossed the Lake Street Elevated. One could transfer between the two lines at this point and the view from the Metropolitan must have been spectacular and a little scary as it would have been almost twice as high as a normal L station.