A historic train route is getting new life.
The Bronzeville Trail revitalization project is underway after years of planning. The project aims to turn a disused rail line in the historic Chicago community into a path for walking, biking and gathering.
The west end of the trail will start near 40th and Dearborn streets, extending eastward two miles along 41st Street and ending at Lake Park Avenue.
Organizers hope to honor the area’s cultural significance and help improve the community’s health outcomes and opportunities.
The projected cost is $100 million with $6 million already secured. Organizers received a $900,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation, which has helped with archival research. The city made a commitment of $5 million to activate the project; that will go toward a framework plan.
Honoring local history is where developers have their work cut out for them.
“We have to pay very close attention to prominent historic figures who lived in the area, prominent, prominent families who migrated to the area during the Great Migration and then to get jobs,” said John Gay, leading architect for the project and founder of the architecture firm JAQ. “The majority of the jobs for our community were over at stockyards. This line has two names. It is known as the Stockyard Line. It’s known as the Kenwood Line because it’s the greater Kenwood neighborhood.”
The Kenwood Line, now abandoned, encompasses most of the old embankments. It was originally part of a network built by the Union Stock Yard and Transit Company in the 1860s. The South Side Elevated Railroad became responsible for the branch in 1907 and integrated the line into the city’s ‘L’ system with two tracks, one for freight trains and the other for passengers.
Gay said there is a lot of cultural influence they will need to bring in.
The length of the trail is expected to connect communities and potentially make travel easier for South Side residents.
“We think another potential feature that’s really exciting is that the embankment runs literally adjacent to the Green Line,” said John Adams, executive director and founder of the Bronzeville Trail Task Force. “Right at Indiana, one should be able to get off the Green Line, 41st and Indiana, access from the platform to the Bronzeville Trail, and then, hypothetically, walk to Roberts Temple without having to go down to street level.”
Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ was named a national monument in 2023. It was the site of Emmett Till’s open casket funeral in 1955. It’s currently undergoing renovations, but Adams said early estimates predict the site will pull in 3-5 million visitors per year.
Other trail/cultural projects in the city have been backed by significant federal funding. Adams said the North Side Bloomingdale 606 Trail received around $55 million from the government in 2023. However, the Trump administration has launched initiatives to cut funding for DEI-related efforts.
“What’s happening in Washington will have no impact on the framework plan and Phase 1 construction taking place,” Adams said. “It’s suffice to say that there will be an election for the presidency in November of 2028 that just simply coincides with, hopefully, the completion of Phase 1 construction.”
Gay said he looks forward to incorporating the rhythm of the community in the design plans and presenting as much historical context throughout the trail as possible.
“The piece that Bronzeville Trail is going to incorporate that others don’t, there’s going to be a connection to the history,” Gay said. “Imagine QR codes as you walk around and you stop at a coffee shop or the dog park, and you hit that QR code, and bam, you can read about the history through the archive that will be live and present as a result of it. There’s so many layers to this.”
