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Wrigley Field Construction Update: December 31

The ballpark was quiet on New Year's Eve.

BCB's David Sameshima visited Wrigley Field on Saturday and reported that it was fairly quiet, construction-wise. Not much has changed on the exterior of the park in the last few days; you can see that they have made considerable progress on the Hotel Zachary site across Clark Street from the ballpark.

About the only thing that was going on while David was visiting was a wedding party taking photos near the marquee.

Since it's included in one of these photos I wanted to point out a bit of Wrigleyville trivia. In photo 1 you see a green post. That's an old railroad signal post. A rail line used to go past Wrigley Field, at one time as far north as Foster, delivering mostly freight to businesses on the North Side. One of them was the coal yard that was adjacent to Wrigley until the early 1960s; the line was still operational as far north as Fullerton until about 15 years ago. You can see this rail line here on this city map from 1946. You might have to scroll around the image a bit to see the location of Wrigley, which says "N.L. Ball Park" on this map. The rail line is the black line that curves to the west just south of Wrigley. If you drive through the neighborhood south of Wrigley, you will see newer-construction homes next to older buildings; this is where the rail line used to be.

Anyway, the green post is the last remnant of this rail line; when the line was decommissioned it wasn't removed and likely won't ever be, unless some developer comes by and builds something new on that property. If you've ever walked by that post and wondered what it was, which is just west of the Cubby Bear on Addison, now you know.

We'll have more photos as the project continues.