When We All Rode Streetcars The Hammond, Whiting and East Chicago Electric Railway System

Jerry Banik September, 2021

Before the people of Whiting and Robertsdale had personal automobiles, before there were Yellow Cabs, before they had municipal bus service, Uber or Lyft, they used streetcars to get to places too far away to walk.  They could ride streetcars to and from Chicago’s Loop, or hop a streetcar to downtown Hammond to shop.  A streetcar could get them to East Chicago and back home again.  Thousands of employees and their family members rode to Whiting Park, Kindel’s Grove and other picnic grounds on streetcars, to attend annual events that Standard Oil, Amaizo and other big, local companies sponsored.

Some quick background and loads of images…

In the middle of the 19th century, horses powered America’s earliest streetcars over steel rails embedded in the street.  The smooth rails and wheels enabled horses to pull heavy loads on these “horse railroads”. All the way back in 1866, Hammond actually granted a franchise to a firm that called itself the Hammond Horse and Steam Dummy Railway Company, but no such railway was ever built.

Some early streetcar systems used steam engines to power the cars, but noisy engines with moving parts on open cars often spooked horses that shared the streets with them.  One solution to this problem was the “steam dummy”, a steam motor car covered with a shell to hide the engine and reduce the noise.  It was often designed and painted to look like a passenger car.

Systems in some cities, including Chicago, opted for cable cars that ran on rails with a slot between them. In that slot, an underground cable ran continuously on huge winding wheels from a central powerhouse.  Cars had grips, much like a pair of pliers, that grabbed the underground cable, pulling the cars forward.

The streetcar system through Whiting and Robertsdale was a trolley car system.  The term “trolley car” comes from the trolley poles that reached up from atop the cars to overhead wires, supplying electricity to the cars’ motors.

By 1892, Hammond and East Chicago had each built small, electric streetcar lines.  In 1893, Hammond’s line was connected to East Chicago’s, running to E.C. via Gostlin, Chicago and Columbia Avenues, though years later that route was dismantled and rebuilt down different streets.

Later that same year, East Chicago’s line, called the Chicago and Calumet Terminal Railway, was extended to Whiting via a route down the middle of Indianapolis Boulevard to Schrage Avenue.  From Schrage, it ran north up to 119th Street, turned left and went through Whiting’s business district to the Boulevard and on up to Roby.

Through a series of sales and mergers, those lines came together as one organization, the Hammond, Whiting and East Chicago Electric Railway, or HW&EC. Electricity for the railway was originally generated by a small power house in East Chicago, but was later purchased from a Chicago provider.

Because all of its cars were painted green, from its earliest days the HW&EC was simply referred to as the Green Line.

In 1895, the HW&EC built a line that connected downtown Hammond to Robertsdale.  It ran From Gostlin Street, up Sheffield Avenue to Calumet Avenue, and continued on to Indianapolis Boulevard, where it hooked up with the Whiting system at what we know today as Five Points, creating a loop through the three cities.  Also, that same year, the Whiting line on the Boulevard was extended from Calumet Avenue to the state line and Chicago.

In 1896, the HW&EC reported annual ridership of 500,000 passengers, and the South Chicago City Railway purchased a controlling interest in the company. Over time, that line and others consolidated under the authority of the Chicago Surface Lines, which we know today as the Chicago Transit Authority.

Cars owned by various Chicago companies were familiar sights operating on HW&EC tracks in Hammond and Whiting.

In addition to passenger cars, the HW&EC ran sweepers, sprinklers, a wrecker and snow plow cars. It didn’t purchase many cars on its own; most were leased from the South Chicago City Railway.

In 1896 the HW&EC built a car barn for rolling stock maintenance in North Hammond.  In 1910 they added a two-story office building, and in 1918 added a lot for storing their large, double truck cars.  Those buildings stood until 2021, when they were demolished to make way for Hammond’s new South Shore Line development project.  In 1929, the HW&EC purchased property at Sheffield and 137th Street, which today is the eastern portion of the Sheffield Estates trailer park.  That site was used for material storage, and, in 1940, for demolition of obsolete streetcars.

In those early days, a streetcar ride up Sheffield to Chicago was a scenic trip, traveling between Wolf Lake and George Lake, whose shorelines back then stretched considerably farther than they do today.  Riders passed popular picnic groves and huge ice houses on their way north to Robertsdale.  At Calumet Avenue and Indianapolis Boulevard, they passed the White House resort, formerly the Forsythe family mansion, then continued on past the Columbian Athletic Club and the racetrack of the Roby Racing Association.

The tracks on Sheffield and Calumet Avenue had a unique peculiarity, though.  According to the Electric Railway Historical Society, in the HW&EC’s waning years, those streets were paved with macadam, and cracks and holes were being repaired by surfacing them with tar and chat.  Hot tar was sprinkled on both the pavement and the rails, then fine chat was spread over the tar.  As a result, for a day or two, bright, blue flames would shoot out from under the wheels as the cars passed over.  An airline pilot reported that, from above at night, it appeared that power lines were down and flashing on the ground.

The ticket above was purchased at 5:40 PM on February 26, year unknown, for a ride on Hammond’s Route 11, the Sheffield Avenue route, northbound.  It could have taken its owner from downtown Hammond as far as Indianapolis Boulevard and the Illinois state line. There, for an additional fee, the rider could have continued on to 63rd Street in Chicago, at Jackson Park. The cost? Eight cents to the state line and seven cents more to 63rd Street. From the 63rd Street station a rider could also transfer to other lines, and ride all throughout the vast systems of Chicago and its suburbs.

Before we fall prey to romanticized notions about what our streetcar era was like, we should know that living in cities with streetcars often left a lot to be desired, not just for riders, but for other travelers, and for pedestrians as well. 

On open “summer” cars, if a rainstorm came up, the motorman and conductor had to stop the car and quickly put side curtains in place to keep passengers from getting wetter than they probably already were.

According to newspaper reports, in 1895, a rider named Sophia Julier sued the HW&EC for $5,000, alleging injuries incurred in a streetcar wreck near Whiting.

That same year, at the corner of 119th and Ohio Avenue, a power pole broke off, letting the trolley wire fall down.  It struck Leon Squier, a pedestrian, on the arm, giving him a severe electric shock and burning his coat.

In 1896, a man by the name of Meyer Castor was driving a horse and wagon on Indianapolis Boulevard near 106th Street when he was struck by a streetcar, throwing him to the ground.  Before he could recover himself, he was struck by another car on the same line.

In 1897, John Benedict, a well-known streetcar conductor, had to evict an offensive drunk from his car.  The drunk “pulled a knife and made several vicious stabs” at Mr. Benedict, cutting him in the thigh before being overpowered.

In a 1906 report, the Lake County Times expressed an opinion held by many disgruntled riders over their treatment at the hands of rude or belligerent conductors.  Quoting from the paper, a bricklayer named Fred Neff had, “beaten up Conductor Young, making Young over into something about as near a corpse as could be without killing him entirely.” At Neff’s trial he was merely fined $10.  The article said that it was, “a verdict that practically reads, ‘served him right.’  There are too many of these cheap plugs who get their carcasses into uniforms and brass buttons, and then vent their innate brutality on the weak and helpless.  Let them take a lesson.”

In 1908, The Lake County Times reported, “It is an actual fact that Hammond women have been made sick by a ride on one of the local street cars, and every day people in poor health, old men and children, are compelled to ride over rails that are a disgrace to any self-respecting company.”

After the end of World War I, buses and autos without regular routes, called jitneys, emerged.  As quickly as they appeared many of them went out of business, but were just as quickly replaced by others.  Then, in 1924, regular, scheduled motor coach bus service was begun here.

The rapid growth of privately owned automobiles, the jitney services and bus service proved ruinous to the streetcar lines.

By 1929 The HW&EC had been losing money for years.  Their property, tracks and cars were in terrible disrepair.  The company went into receivership and was purchased by Calumet Railways, Inc., which announced big, expensive plans for improvements and expansion.

But the stock market crash of 1929 put a quick end to Calumet Railways’ big plans, and the cities of Hammond, Whiting and East Chicago were in danger of losing their electric railway service.  In 1931 the Chicago and Calumet District Transit Company acquired all of Calumet Railways’ battered and poorly maintained property and operating rights.

In 1934, service from Hammond to East Chicago was ended.  As the Great Depression wore on, service was continuously reduced, until, in 1940, Whiting saw its last streetcar roll down 119th Street.

Scroll down for more images from Whiting and Robertsdale’s streetcar era.

Acknowledgments: A 1953 bulletin from The Electric Railway Historical Society, the J.G. Brill Company’s “Brill Magazine” and newspaper articles from the Hammond Times served as a valuable sources of information for this article.