Picture your route to work. Some of it could move more quickly, but in other places you intentionally stop to talk to friends, or pick up something to eat. Or it's not a destination but a point where you reflect on what's ahead.
For me that's the subway stop near my home. Not so much the subway itself—we share the tunnel with quite a few creatures but it's not like visiting the zoo. And not so much the entrance, where the stairway is getting patched checkerboard style with whatever tile's on hand, and when it rains you have to dodge the puddles.
Beyond the Blue Line entrance at Division is a small plaza, which is possibly even less notable. Milwaukee Avenue is the cross street, and in Chicago we love our diagonal intersections. North, Damen and Milwaukee is just up the street, the gateway to Bucktown, and people are all in a hurry to get somewhere and walking every which way, no matter what the traffic signals say. Here, where Division intersects Ashland just a bit short of Milwaukee, there's this triangle-shaped wedge of a plaza that floats in the intersection like a raft. People mostly avoid it, as if it would float away.
The station and its patchwork staircase are due for renovations, so I was describing this place to a Tribune reporter. It's not as welcoming an area as it should be, I said. There's a constant fight against pigeons. I went on at great length, but those 16 words are all that got in the paper. When talking to a reporter, always keep a sound bite handy. This isn't the one I would have chosen.
It's not fake news. The reporter started out the column calling it a gray pigeony place—if pigeony is a word, it's unknown to Google spell check—and the pigeons helped out by posing for the Tribune photographer. So this part of the story has the insistent coo of truth. But my point was to look beyond the subway station and give some love to what has long been called the Polish Triangle.
In the subway's 1950s debut, the neigbhorhood was not Wicker Park but Polonia, and the Triangle marked the Division Street business district; the land itself was just a grassy island with a few benches along the sidewalk. When I moved to the neighborhood in 1998, brick pavers had replaced the grass and the fountain had just been dedicated to Chicago author Nelson Algren. He wrote the book for the Frank Sinatra movie "The Man With the Golden Arm." Sinatra played an addict, so neighborhood old-timers weren't all so thrilled about the dedication.
The neighborhood was still dicey enough that when the burglar alarm sounded at my house, the police sent a SWAT team. I hear my dog stood at attention and wagged his tail at the cops. So people didn't linger for the subway. A decade later, the neighborhood was improving, and civic groups floated ideas on improvements that would bring activity to the Triangle. Meanwhile, the ward office was getting complaints about the improvements that were already there. It had benches, and the benches had people sleeping on them. So the city removed the benches. Things were going in the wrong direction: We weren't allowed to have nice things.
After some discussion, a group organized summer concerts on the Triangle. Eventually I got involved setting up chairs, handing out fliers and shooting videos of the musicians. Crowds come, pigeons stay away, and late in the day there's a bright sun behind the band.
But we also tried to keep the Triangle on the city's radar. We looked for a food vendor, who couldn't navigate the licensing. And we asked an architect to imagine the possibilities. Her drawings had signs for disoriented subway riders, a lighted trellis to give them a safe path forward. She brought back the benches, along with a water feature that could replace the fountain, which is missing chunks of its base and starting to lean sideways.
These drawings got us an audience with city planners, who have own ideas about the station. What's in the works is mostly repair work, plus a roof at the entrance—nothing grand, mostly something to divert water from the stairwell. In the works is an All Stations Accessibility Program, or ASAP, which would finally bring an elevator and escalator to the station. The downside: ASAP is not coming any time soon. It's a 20-year plan, with Division on the back end of the schedule. And there's no money for construction.
So what are we to make of my path to work? Apartment construction is booming on Milwaukee Avenue. Soon the Triangle will have high-rises on all sides. Tenants will rush to work, but when they return they'll need a place to hang. I've seen how it can work at the concerts. People come out of the subway, stop for tacos, listen to the music, watch the sunset. And I think there's a better sound bite for this. You have to linger awhile to hear it, but it's common to the start of every commute. These spaces are our front yard. We should pull up a chair and stay awhile. 🦄
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