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About the same time that the North Shore Line sought and built abypass route for their interurban, the Chicago Aurora & Elgindecided to do the same, with similar results for the Chicago RapidTransit Company (CRT), the private owner and operator of the "L" atthat time. In June 1925, the Chicago Westchester & WesternRailroad was organized to built the bypass for the CA&E, whichwould leave their main line at Bellwood, turn south to 22nd Street,then proceed west to rejoin the interurban's Aurora branch nearWarrenville. The CA&E's predicament was not nearly as dire as theNSL's had been, as the track on their original main line was a higherquality and population around it was less dense. As such, the bypasswas to be built in leisurely phases, the first of which was amile-long branch fromBellwoodAvenue in Bellwood toRooseveltRoad in Westchester. Conveniently (and perhaps not socoincidentally), this branch served a 2,000-acre tract of landbelonging to associates of CA&E president Thomas Conway, Jr.,which was quickly sold to developers, divided into lots, andsold.
The workers who built the extension lived in a special work camp,the Grant N. Britten Camp, built especially for them by Mr. Britten,a Westchester village trustee. The camp was located just north of theIllinois Central tracks east of LaGrange-Mannheim Road. According toa January 20, 1926 story in theWestchester Tribune,
"The camp is really a model of convenience and comfort. The old farm house is used as an office and the big barn was renovated and converted into a bunk house. It is well heated night and day and double-tier bunks on the first and second floors accommodate over two hundred men. The only other large building is the mess hall and kitchen, portable garages being used for all the other purposes. Commissary, pump house, tool house, bath house and other requirements are taken care of in these portable buildings... The dining room and kitchen are models of cleanliness and the most fastidious person could sit down to a meal with the knowledge that he is getting good food that is prepared in a model, sanitary kitchen. A well was dug which provides not only an ample supply of water fro the camp but it can probably supply the village for the first few years. The camp has been feeding about two hundred men a day for several months and they are well cared for in every way. Mr. Britton [sic] has had charge of construction work and construction camps for many years and knows how to handle a large organization of this kind to advantage. Visitors area welcome at the camp at any time."2
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The Westchester extension was dedicated on September 30, 1926 witha three-car train carrying officials, reporters, and other guests.Service began at 12:34am on Friday, October 1, 1926. According to theWestchester Tribune, the new service was celebrated onSaturday and Sunday, October 2-3, with "a Texas barbecue, fish fryand other features... held at the William Zelosky Company officealong Roosevelt Road." William Zelosky was Westchester's leadingdeveloper. The company planned to make Westchester a model suburb,with wide streets, careful zoning, and provision for a civic center,parks and playgrounds, with about ten percent of the total areareserved for public use.
Except in the very early morning when all Westchester trains werelocals, trains to and fromRooseveltRoad had a very elaborate timetable of various types of expressruns to theLoop. Eastbound, trains in themorning rush and midday typical made all stops toDesplaines,then skipped some combination of stations toCanalStreet (depending on the time of day), then made all stops to andaround theLoop. Afternoon rush and eveningeastbound trains were locals. Westbound, all trains at all time fromtheLoop skipped at least some stops, withthe fastest express runs in midday and the evening rush. Toaccommodate these express operations, as well as faster CA&Etrains, an express passing track was added atGundersonin addition to the passing tracks atDesplaines,Laramie, and St.Louis. These Westchester expresses were far more useful to residentsof Oak Park, Forest Park, and Maywood than the few inhabitants ofWestchester, which was just as sparsely-populated as Niles Center atthe time. Express trains ran every twelve minutes on a 13-cent fareschedule for one way or 25 cents for the round-trip. The single adultfare to any point on the newly developed line west of DesplainesAvenue was seven cents, while the single fare of a child up to 12years of age for any point west of Desplaines Avenue was three centsor six cents for trips east of Desplaines. School tickets forchildren from 12 to 16 years of age could be purchased in books offifty for $2.50. Adult weekly passes for Westchester patrons could bebought for $2 each and could be used anywhere on the new service,anywhere in the city of Chicago, Cicero or Berwyn.
It is interesting to note that, according to Mr. Moran, commercialmanager of the William Zelosky Company, the Chicago Rapid TransitCompany plainly expected to lose money on the Westchester branchproject. Moran was confident, however, that as Westchester built upthe territory would eventually provide a fertile ground for ridershipand would be profitable if the rapid transit company provided theservice the territory would need. And naturally, as boosters fortheir development, the Zelosky Company predicted that developmentwould boom quickly and property values would skyrocket. The companypointed to areas such as Uptown, Ravenswood, and Albany Park as otherareas which, once good rapid transit service was provided, quicklydeveloped. They saw the same future for Westchester. What they couldnot predict, of course, was the approaching Depression.
On December 1, 1930, a mile-long extension was added fromRoosevelt to22nd & Mannheim.This single track extension served an area even more lightlypopulated than the rest of the branch. The22nd& Mannheim terminal consisted of little more than a tinywooden station house (later removed) and a short wooden platform.While the reasoning for such a extension might seem questionable, the22nd & Mannheimstation was adjacent to the site that was to contain the villageCivic Center in Westchester's master plan. The site, which would haveserved as Westchester's downtown, was to have contained the villagehall, a library, a fountain and a "cultural hall". Instead, all thatthe property would contain was grass and weeds until after World WarII. Service on the extension was first operated by one-car shuttlestoRooseveltRoad, where passengers could connect to Loop-bound expresses.This was more than ample, and soon the ticket agent's job at22nd Street waseliminated due to a lack of traffic. The shuttle was replaced in 1930with a car that was coupled to and from Loop-bound express trainsdispatched fromRooseveltRoad.
Little changed in Westchester operations for almost two decades.When the Depression hit in 1929, development in Westchester ceased.Mirroring the situation in Niles Center, where the "L"'s other newbranch line was located, the lots sat empty and streets and sidewalksslowly deteriorated and became overgrown with weeds. There was littleto feed traffic to the fledgling rapid transit line. Development inWestchester resumed in 1940, but its pace was still slow andshort-lived, as World War II soon struck and once again put a damperon major construction. Defense workers did, however, build twohundred homes between Roosevelt Road and Harrison Street during thewar.
After the CTA took overoperation of the "L" in October 1947, they began studying all of theservices and making changes to improve performance and efficiency.Although Westchester service would be short-lived under theCTA , they did make some smallchanges to the service during its brief tenure under theAuthority.
As they did on many routes, on February 19, 1950 revised theoperation of the Westchester branch to try to realize some economieson the relatively-lightly used branch. From this date, GarfieldPark-Westchester through trains from theLoopwere truncated back toRooseveltRoad. Service fromCermak/MannheimtoRooseveltRoad was provided by a rush hour-only shuttle Monday throughSaturday. No service was provided south ofRooseveltat other times.
Whatever the case, the Westchester's days were numbered. Followingthe reorganization of Lake Street service in 1948 and North-Southservices in 1949, the CTA setits sights on streamlining the rest of the West Side lines. TheWestchester branch was a low performer and therefore was targeted forelimination. Although the all-time highest traffic levels for thebranch were attained in 1946, the numbers began to steadily declineagain after that. While construction in Westchester resumed afterWorld War II, boosted by financial programs made available by theFederal Housing Administration and the Veterans Administration -- 180new homes were built in 1949 and another two hundred were planned for1950 -- by 1950 it was still too sparse to support a rapid transitline, by the CTA's standards.Unfortunately, although at the time the population in the suburb wasstill sparse and diffuse, the indicators were all present that itwould likely develop and fill in in short order, and had theCTA been willing to hang onfor a while the line may have developed significant enough traffic tojustify the service. Certainly, the ability to serve the EisenhowerExpressway corridor and perhaps some of the suburbs served by theformer Westchester branch would be beneficial today. But theCTA likely also did not seethe Westchester branch as fitting in with its vision for its rapidtransit system, regardless of traffic levels, which it saw as trunklines serving high-traffic corridors, with buses feeding the "L" fromsurrounding lower density areas.
As such, on December 9, 1951, service on the Westchester branchwas suspended as part of an overall reorganization of theGarfieldandDouglas services. Service waseliminated west ofDesplainesAvenue and the former Westchester service was replaced by the #17Westchester bus. The bus route more or less mimicked the route of theold branch, operating fromDesplainesstation via Desplaines, Madison, 25th, Madison, Bellwood andWestchester to a terminal loop running clockwise around Westchester,Canterbury, Balmoral, and Roosevelt. In September 1952,Monday-Saturday service was extended south to near the oldCermak/Mannheimterminal, operating via Westchester, Cermak, Mannheim, Balmoral, andRoosevelt. Service south of Roosevelt to Cermak was later reduced toweekday rush hours only and was eliminated altogether in 1982. Owlservice was cut in 1976 and weekend service was eliminated in 1992.The CTA still operates the #17Westchester bus today, and it appears on maps as an unusual outlierin the CTA bus system,operating in territory normally covered by thePacesuburban bus system. Such is the lasting legacy of the formerWestchester "L" branch.
Following the suspension of "L" service, the CA&E continuedusing their main line betweenDesplainesandBellwood for regularinterurban service until they discontinued all passenger servicemidday on July 3, 1957. The CA&E main line west ofDesplaineswas transformed into thePrairiePath, a 61-mile multi-use limestone trail commonly used bybicyclists, joggers, and hikers. The Prairie Path was the country'sfirst major rails-to-trails conversion and the first nationallydesignated trail in Illinois. The trail was first established in1966, with various extensions added throughout the years.
The branch itself, south ofBellwood,simply fell into disuse and the rails, stations, and otherinfrastructure were eventually removed. However, there are severalremnants of the Westchester branch in Bellwood and Westchester.Although there is nothing as obvious as tracks or stations, there arenumerous places where the path of the right-of-way is still clearlyevident because of unusual linear open spaces, the path of telephonepoles, or the way other infrastructure is placed to accommodate thelong-gone line. For instance, the bridge that took the IllinoisCentral's Iowa Division over the branch is still present, althoughpart of the passage underneath has been filled in. In addition,Roosevelt Road has a odd rise in it west of Westchester Boulevard,where it once went up and over the "L" tracks. Rather than re-levelthe street, the viaduct was simply filled in, leaving the profileintact.
In the pre-CTA era, a stripof land north of and paralleling 22nd Street west from Mannheim Roadhad been acquired for the further extension of the intended bypassline. However, this land was sold after World War II for backtaxes.
The current occupant of location of theMannheim/22ndstation is the Mid-America Bank in Westchester.
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