You Gotta Be Kidding me - Chicago Lake St Tower Demolished

Saw this heartwrenching photo last week of a backhoe ripping down the 80+ year old Lake Street tower at the north end of the Chicago Union Station complex. Lake St was in service until 2005 with both a big US&S Model 14 interlocking machine for the local interlocking and a large panel for the entire southern end of the Union Station complex.  While disused since then Lake Street was in amazing shape and in a very secure area.

Well so much for all that.  Perhaps it was attracting too many railfan photographers or perhaps Chicago is following through with some old pipe dream plans to cover the tracks in this area with either a park or parking lot.  Whatever the reason the City of Chicago has lost an important historic artifact that could have been preserved as a museum at the tri-point of the Chicago river.

Hopefully the interlocking machine and model boards were preserved before the tower was ripped down.  Fortunately the tower at the other end of the Union Station complex, Jackson Street, is immune from demolition as the new Post Office building was literally built around it in the 1990's.  Unfortunately its view of the city is now severely limited.