$tarbucks@North/Clybourn Red Line

Starbucks is coming to the street-level North/Clybourn Red Line subway station (next to the Apple Store). Remember when the trains didn't even stop there on weekends? When that station was built by the Works Progress Administration, I imagine the price of an ordinary cup of coffee was still 5 cents. Now, if GREEN is good enough for Starbucks, why isn't it good enough for the Chicago Transit Authority any more?

I just realized last week what drives me nuts about this station. It's in an island. Absolutely every passenger coming off the red line must cross a busy thoroughfare to get off the island in between North/Halsted/Clybourn. Most stations in the city have a short pedway leading to a stair on the other side of the street. Not here. I used this station a lot in 2010-2011 as I lived about five blocks north. I'm a Fullerton guy now.

This subway station was originally constructed with ONE such subterranean "pedway" passageway southward under Clybourn to "Dayton Street", at the mezzanine level, and is so marked with ceramic tile lettering. It was "exit-only" but, were it not abandoned and plugged up, could have been used today as a farecard entrance like the reopened Polk Street entrance to Harrison Red Line Station (which still has ceramic tile letters reading "Dearborn Station").

I think one or two of the multiple Grand/Milwaukee Blue Line "pedway" entrances also got plugged up in later years. Grand/Milwaukee was closed altogether for a number of years. It was the only subway station in Chicago ever to be abandoned outright (not counting the Washington/State stop on the Red LIne or the south entrance to Jackson/State, between Van Buren and Congress (which had been constructed with an entrance to the former Sears, Roebuck & Co. department store).