This city has a number of memorable El stops, like the Blue Line’s Damen station, with its fascinating view of Wicker Park’s buzzing North/Damen/Milwaukee crotch and the Red Line’s sparkling-clean, Apple-sponsored North/Clybourn stop, complete with a sleek new seating plaza. But we love the Green Line’s 35th/Bronzeville/IIT station for two reasons. Just north, trains zoom through a super-cool, 530-foot stainless steel tube above the Rem Koolhaas-designed McCormick Tribune Campus Center. And while the Sox/35th Red Line stop is a madhouse after baseball games, CTA blackbelts know you can skip the crowds by strolling two blocks east to the nearly empty Green Line station.
South State and East 35th
Audience choice:
Belmont Station (Red, Brown and Purple Lines)
Best audience comments: “The one that’s clean, safe, structurally sound, and doesn’t smell like feet—I forgot the name”; “The Lakes in the Loop (Clark & State): because where else can you head NSWE from the same station?”
