I found the photograph on the left of my sister Susan in an old album on a shelf in the bedroom closet of her townhouse up in Fort Collins, which I am cleaning out to prepare it to be sold. I am pretty sure it was taken at the Illinois Central's Roosevelt Road commuter stop. At the time, she and George, her late husband, lived in an apartment at 1130 South Michigan, right across the street from both that platform and the very grand Central Station, which was the IC's main station and corporate headquarters.
Susan and George's apartment was on the 24th floor, and looked out on a giant neon Pepsi sign, which gave the time and temperature 24/7. Talk about handy. If you stuck your head out the window and looked to the left, you were abe to see Central Station (in the forground of the photograph on the right), as well as the Field Museum, Shedd Aquarium, and Adler Planetarium, with Lake Michigan in the background. Sadly, once Amtrak took over passenger rail service back in 1971, the station was abandoned and torn down. The commuter train still stops there, but operations were taken over by the Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) and the is now part of Metra. The IC is now only a distant memory.
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