Irving Park - CTA Brown Line

Irving Park is an elevated brown line station that was closed for renovations for a year from December 3, 2007 to December 6, 2008. The station has the usual two wooden side platforms that have two-car length canopies that are at their northern ends. The stop's main entrance is in a modern redbrick station house along the northside of Irving Park Road. It is two steps from the sidewalk and steps and a ramp (complete with railings) leads up to two doors into the station with the usual white walls. There are first the turnstiles and the wall of the fare paid area has two mosaic murals (there is also one on the exterior of the station house on the street). These are Commonplaces by Juan Carlos Macias, Venetian hand-cut glass mosaic, 2008. There are then red brick elevator shafts up to each platform in the middle of the canopy, and a staircase that rises up from the station house in an odd direction coming up back over the turnstiles and clearly visible from the street. These lead up to each platform just south of the canopy (be in the third car from the northern end of an 8 car train).

There is a secondary exit (from the third car from the southern end of an 8 car train) that has a high exit only turnstile on each platform before a short staircase to an intermediate landing that shifts the staircase 90 degrees inward and down a few more steps to another intermediate landing where it meads the staircase from the opposite platform before four more steps down to the south side of Irving Park Road across from the main station entrance.
All photos taken on 1 August, 2011