Chicago "L" 2014, the "L" had an average of 752,734 passenger boardings each weekday, 486,267 each Saturday, and 359,777 each Sunday. In a 2005 poll, "Chicago Tribune" readers voted it one of the "seven wonders of Chicago", behind the lakefront and Wrigley Field, but ahead of Willis Tower (formerly the Sears Tower), the Water Tower, the University of Chicago, and the Museum of Science and Industry. The first "L", the Chicago and South Side Rapid Transit Railroad, began revenue service on June 6, 1892, when a steam locomotive pulling four wooden coaches, carrying more than a couple of dozen people, departed the
Joshua Sears Building works on what is now Peter Kirk Park. The building originally intended to house a bank at the corner. Sears outfitted the entire interior and even hired a partial staff but with the arrival of the Panic of 1893, the doors, like the steel mill, never opened. In the years after the bust, the building, like many others in the area remained mostly vacant, though it, along with a large portion of the original townsite remained in the ownership of the Sears estate. The corner space was eventually occupied by a printing company and later a grocery store. An electric