When we visited the site of State Line Generating in 2014, We thought we were just going to be seeing a derelict old powerplant. Instead, we were greeted with a structure whose architecture and attention to detail rivaled some of the most famous buildings in downtown Chicago. Graham, Anderston, Probst and White, the engineering firm behind some of the most famous buildings in the Midwest including the Merchandise Mart, the Museum of Science and Industry, the Wrigley Building and many more, leant their talents to designing one of the most beautiful power plants of the new era of electrification.
Wikipedia has a great in-depth history of the Stateline plant
Switched online in 1929, Stateline was then the largest power plant in the Chicago Commonwealth-Edison system. Envisioned by Samuel Insull, designed by GAP&W, and containing the world's largest turbine generator, Stateline served the Chicago metropolitan area for nearly a century with a total of 4 coal-fired units in operation at its peak in the 1970's. Envisioned by Mr. Insull to be the world's first gigawatt plant, Stateline was built to withstand the test of time. Even during its demotlition, the plant did not go down without a fight. The first round of explosives bairly made a dent in the massive building. Demolition took far longer than expected, but ultimately the last of the plant structures would be down by mid-2014. Fortunately, the new property owner saw fit to preserve the gateway arch to the facility, the last remnant of the art-deco stylings that once graced one of the largest coal-fired plants on Lake Michigan.
Stateline Generating Station is interesting in that a custom herald was designed specifically for the plant by Com-Ed. It features a central riveted Com-Ed logo with the plant's name on the top and bottom. I'm not aware of any other Com-Ed plants that recieved similar custom branding and I'm not entirely sure what made this plant special enough to warrant it. Nonetheless, the herald could be found in all areas of the offices, the control room, and various limestone carvings on the walls of the turbine room.
The logo displayed on the top of this site was directly remasterd from a scan of a power meter faceplate taken from Stateline. The original scan can be found here in high resolution for archival purposes. This scan was brought into Adobe Illustrator and manually traced for the highest accuracy to the original plotting; done in the 1970's for the control room of Units 3 and 4.
Please enjoy the website, and feel free to suggest changes, give credit for photographs, or contribute your own content to preserve the legacy of the golden age of industry in the US. They say things aren't made like they used to be, and in an era where everything can be thrown away and replaced, it's sad to see yet another historical reminder of years past be removed to make room for another subdivision.
-Patrick
