Edward Keegan: Happy 10th birthday, The 606! Here's why you are worth celebrating.

Chicago Tribune

11 hours ago

An architect eagerly awaits the opening day of a building as it usually offers the most faithful presentation of their design. But it's quite different for a landscape architect. The first day merely what their design is about. It takes years — and patience and a little luck as well — to realize their intentions. Thus The 606 — now 10 years old — has just started to demonstrate its full potential.
From the start, The 606 was a different kind of park.
It's built on the imposing concrete bones of the Bloomingdale Line — a century old piece of industrial infrastructure that raised active railroad lines 20 feet above street level to alleviate pedestrian deaths that had plagued the city's rail lines. The then-abandoned tracks were identified as a potential bike trail by 1998 and the advocacy group Friends of the Bloomingdale Trail was founded in 2003. Chicago architect Carol Ross Barney led an early community engagement process that produced the Bloomingdale Trail and Park Framework Plan in 2012 and contained the basic design for the 2.7-mile-long park. The subsequent development of those designs, including the critical landscaping scheme, was completed by Brooklyn-based landscape architect Michael van Valkenburgh and opened to the public in 2015.
In a city where almost everything is on a strict grid and flat, The 606 is neither.
As built in the 1910s, the structure is a generally constant 16 feet above street level and 30 feet wide. The Bloomingdale Line acted as something of a brute force insertion within the Wicker Park, Bucktown, Logan Square and Humboldt Park neighborhoods, with its massive concrete walls dividing north from south in a most unsubtle way. While The 606 kept most of these imposing concrete structures intact, the designers constructed a highly varied topography within the original walls. The paved 14-feet-wide trail rises and falls while undulating between these walls.
As befits a park, The 606's built elements are few: the paved trail, custom light fixture and galvanized steel rails that prevent visitors from falling off the structure cover most of these. The gridded metal fences stand atop the old concrete walls and are less obvious now, often providing support for climbing plants that soften the overall effect and help screen the park from the city.
The buildings on each side of the trail are less a factor than they were a decade ago. The landscaping obscures many of the neighboring structures, which is certainly for the best along much of the eastern blocks. Ironically, the lushest landscapes occur toward the western end where the plantings often block views of older and more architecturally distinguished buildings.
Street signs are located at every street crossing, but they're discrete enough not to distract and it's easy to walk for blocks without being aware of your precise location.
Specific spots along the trail offer unique experiences. One of the more memorable spots at the park's opening was the thicket of quaking aspens east of Drake Avenue. Their reedy stick-like appearance in youth was striking, but the stand of trees has matured to create a unique soundscape where their fluttering leaves define a downright magical and distinctive place. One of the wider spots between the old railroad walls is located between Kimball and Spaulding avenues where a mounded lawn provides a more traditional park space for lounging. And the wide paved plaza above Damen Avenue is designed to display art, but was unfortunately bare on a recent visit.
When the railroad tracks connected transportation networks, the 16-feet-high walls separated neighborhoods. With The 606, those connections were returned to the communities on each side of the park. But it hasn't come without unfortunate consequences, with gentrification being the most obvious. Barney recalls the early community meetings: 'One of the things that was most obvious to everybody was a lot of disparity in terms of the (lower) income and amenity investments on the west side of the trail (versus) the east side of the trail. We were looking hard to get a good design concept, but they also wanted to bring the neighborhoods along the trail together.'
Community stakeholders raised questions. 'Even while we were doing it, there was criticism that it wasn't going deep enough,' Barney said. 'The role that architecture plays in this, or planning or landscape architecture is an important one, but it is not the only place or necessarily the place where the issue is solved.'
The addition of the architecturally distinguished Encuentro Square — designed by Jaime Torres Carmona's Canopy / architecture + design — at the western terminus has been a bright spot for affordable development that benefits from proximity to The 606, but that hasn't been the norm over the past 10 years. Clearly, more work needs to be done.
There was nothing obvious about the old Bloomingdale Line that led to its revival as a park, but many Chicago citizens seized the opportunity and their dogged efforts over many years now pay dividends through the park's enduring beauty.
Originally built to promote movement, it's unexpected that The 606's transformation would create a place of refuge and respite. But that's what it has become over the past decade through thoughtful and truly innovative design that excels at the big things and the little things. Its maturing landscape continues to surprise in the best ways — providing ever-changing experiences that make every visit fresh and new.
And that's worth celebrating and emulating.
Edward Keegan writes, broadcasts and teaches on architectural subjects. Keegan's biweekly architecture column is supported by a grant from former Tribune critic Blair Kamin, as administered by the not-for-profit Journalism Funding Partners. The Tribune maintains editorial control over assignments and content.