(WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- If you walk down Clinton Street outside Union Station, you may notice something new at the iconic building.
“What we did was created an entrance to Clinton Street that enables people to get from Clinton Street to the Great Hall directly,” Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari explained Monday. “There's not been an entrance there since the station was built almost 100 years ago.”
Magliari said the new entrance opened last month but had been in the works to coincide with the city’s long-term closure of Canal Street on the east side of Union Station between Jackson and Adams as crews work on viaducts.
“Back in 2018-2019, we knew the closure was coming, so we thought if we could time this to be open for the closure, it gives people another entrance to the station,” he said, adding that Clinton street becomes the building’s “primary access point,” for awhile.
As more people use the new entrance, Magliari said, that side of Union Station might become more attractive to potential vendors for a food hall.
It may not be as majestic as the Canal Street entrance, where a memorable sequence was filmed for the 1987 period gangster film "The Untouchables" on the staircase leading into the Great Hall. But the Clinton Street side of Union Station was once occupied by the Fred Harvey restaurant chain during passenger rail's heyday.
That section largely had been closed off following a fire more than four decades ago.
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