Logan Square COMFORT STATION

A quaint, unassuming Tudor-style cottage sits in the middle of the Logan Boulevard traffic circle, directly across Milwaukee Avenue from the actual "Square" of Logan Square. This is the Comfort Station, a place that once provided respite to the boulevard's pedestrian shoppers and streetcar travelers. Between 1915 and 1927, nine such structures were built throughout Chicago's 26-mile boulevard system, which connects the city parks as part of a greater effort to promote economic and housing expansion around the parks, in keeping with Chicago's motto: urbs in horto or "City in a Garden."

As Logan Square grew from a mostly residential area to a bustling commercial center, people traveling to and from the neighborhood needed a space to escape the brutal winter chill. The comfort stations originally featured public restrooms and a place to rest and warm up along the trolley line. In the ensuing years as the Great Depression set in, these stations around the city were largely abandoned, and most of them demolished. The Logan Square Comfort Station was spared destruction but listed as vacant in 1940. The city subsequently used it as storage for landscaping equipment for the next several decades.

In 2005, when the Logan Square Boulevards District was established, the city considered tearing down the Comfort Station as it was poorly maintained at the time and clashed with the surrounding architecture. The previous year, the city's Department of Planning and Development had announced a search in the Chicago Tribune for a "nonprofit developer with a mission to provide educational, community, and development or historic enhancing opportunities for the community." Logan Square Preservation accepted the challenge and took on a 15-year lease for the Comfort Station, with a vision to restore it to be used as a multidisciplinary art space. The subsequent renovation, a joint effort by the non-profit and the city, preserved the structure with meticulous historical accuracy.

The building reopened to the public in 2010. Since then, it has featured a variety of community offerings, from live music and comedy to film screenings and art exhibits. At only 800 square feet, the station provides a much more intimate feel to its programming than Chicagoans might associate with other venues in the city.

In the coming years, the city is planning to reroute the now outmoded Logan Square traffic circle configuration due to its high frequency of motor vehicle accidents. Specifically, the stretch of Milwaukee Avenue where the Comfort Station resides will no longer cross the circle but will be redirected around it. How this change will affect the building remains to be seen.

Information on programs and activities at the Logan Square Comfort Station can be found at: comfortstationlogansquare.org