Roosevelt
1200S
1E/1W
1E/1W
The Roosevelt Subway station opened on October 17, 1943 and was originally just a local subway station, the southernmost stop on the State Street subway with the Roosevelt elevated station half a block away. Originally the State Street Subway connected with the Southside Elevated (currently the Green Line). The Dan Ryan Line opened on September 28, 1969 and originally only connected with the Loop south of this station (the Loop and western portion of the Green Line). This caused unmatched ridership between the northern and southern branch pairs. The northern, Howard half of the line requiring more service than the South Side elevated and the Dan Ryan branch requiring much more service than the Lake elevated (the western branch of today's Green Line). The connecting tunnel (originally planned with the original Dan Ryan branch but scrapped to save money) took until February 21, 1993 to open. On this date the Red Line and Green Line colors were unveiled and trains began running their current routings. Red Line trains running south from the subway station here to 95th/Dan Ryan and the Green Line south split between the 63rd Street branches. The subway station was the first to be renovated on the State Street subway, completed in 1996 with the Skyline interior panels along platform and mezzanine walls. There wasn' t yet a passenger transfer connection between the subway and el between the two Roosevelt stations yet. The opening of this connection took until December 7, 2002 when the new North South Intermodal Transfer Tunnel finally opened beneath a new mixed-use development on the north side of Roosevelt between the two stations.
The subway station itself has a single narrow island platform with hanging Roosevelt signs that have Museum Campus with a logo of the front of a building with columns (similar to the facades of the nearby Field Museum and Aquarium) over the Red Squares on each side of the normal grey middle portion. The platform has the normal arched roofs with modern lighting above the edges of the each side of the platform held up by Red Columns. There is a single exit at the southern end of the platform. Here an elevator followed by a single staircase/up escalator lead up to a small mezzanine. This mezzanine has turnstiles and access to two modernized exits; one is a street stair (modern marble looking sides) up to the NW corner of Roosevelt Road and State Street. Across the street at the NE corner is a small glassed around staircase with an elevator at the opposite end directly along the new mixed-use development that the new connecting tunnel goes through. The connecting tunnel within fare control has been decorated as a public art project in collaboration with the Chicago Field Museum as if the passenger is going through geologic time. The roof has a modern silver ceiling. The tunnel leads underground to a connection to the ground-level fare control area and then elevated platforms of the Green and Orange Lines.
Photos 1-4 taken on 15 July, 2006, 5-12 on 4 August, 2012, 13-14: 3 July, 2013, 15-29: 4 July, 2013
