Central Station Fragments

Carved granite fragments come from the Illinois Central Station, which stood at the southwest edge of Grant Park for more than 75 years. Bradford Lee Gilbert, a prolific architect of American railroad buildings, designed the massive Romanesque style structure. Completed in 1893, the station accommodated visitors who thronged to Chicago to attend the World's Columbian Exposition. The station held special significance for more than 500,000 African Americans who left the rural South to settle in Chicago between 1916 and 1970. Considered Chicago's "Black Ellis Island," the building represented the hope of a new life, a theme echoed in Langston Hughes's 1949 poem "One-Way Ticket," which speaks of leaving behind Jim Crow, cruelty, and lynching to go north and west.

Chicago, Illinois · United States