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Pertaining to all railroading subjects, past and present, in the American Midwest, including Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and Kansas. For questions specific to a railroad company, please seek the appropriate forum.

Moderator: railohio

 #668545  by sblackman07
 
Hi,

I'm doing research for a college paper on the planning and construction of Chicago Union Station, covering the period roughly 1909-1925. If anyone on here knows of any good resources, online or in print, please let me know. Thanks in advance, and apologies if this is in the wrong forum. Mods, feel free to move this if you think its warranted.

Steve

[Mod Edit: Please spell out the name of what you're looking for. I'm sure plenty of other "C" cities also had Union Stations. I hope for your sake the first person to reply guessed right.]
 #668746  by railohio
 
Assuming that this is about Chicago Union Station it is fine in this forum. Good luck with your project!
 #673110  by Arborwayfan
 
Try getting a good history of Chicago, like Chicago: City of the Century. It will give you good information that your prof will appreciate, and you can look in its endnotes to see if it cites academic journal articles or other publications that could help you. You could also go straight to J-Stor or another online journal article database that you get to from your college library website. All CarterB's links lead to good and interesting information -- they may keep me busy and happy for quite a while this week; thanks, CarterB -- and are good places to start, but history professors tend to prefer that at least some of your sources be more in-depth, give more context, and cite more sources than most ordinary websites do. (I am a history professor, but I don't know a whole lot about Chicago. I also haven't followed all those links, so please don't take me as criticizing anything about them, which I don't mean to do.) If someone's published an academic article about CUS, it would give you some ideas for your paper that are already in the form and at the level that history courses expect, and make your work easier. Also try google books, to see if there are old guides to the station or pamphlets on why it was being built.

Also look up the Burnham Plan of Chicago. That might help you with the question of why a union station in the first place.



Good luck, and when you write your paper, consider posting part of it for us, or at least the bibliography.
 #673537  by sblackman07
 
Thanks, everyone. I'm working on the draft now, so I'll be sure to post something when the paper is done.

Arborway, you're right on the money. "Chicago: City of the Century," as well as Carl Condit's "Chicago 1910-1929: Building, Planning, and Urban Technology" were great places to start, and if you're interested in this sort of history I highly recommend the latter. The class, an advanced research seminar, is called "The Plan of Chicago," and my paper focuses on the role of the Burnham Plan in the building of Union Station. I'm focusing mostly on the debate over the March 1914 station ordinance, and how the competing interests of the city planners, railroads, real-estate men, and elected officials combined to create the station we have today. The tentative title is "A Question Answered: The Planning, Design, and Construction of Chicago Union Station, 1909-1925."