Chicago Motor Coach Company

by John F. Doyle

Overview

Chicago Motor Coach Company chronicles an era in Chicago when buses first traversed the city's park district boulevards, including the Magnificent Mile. Streetcars were not allowed on the boulevards; this situation paved the way for the first motor bus operation, Sheridan Road on the North Side, in 1917. By 1922, John D. Hertz would purchase the Sheridan Road line and secure franchises to operate over the boulevards on the South and West Sides. The Chicago Motor Coach Company was now born, along with the bus-building industry. From a Hertz plant in Chicago, it would become General Motors Truck and Coach Division at Pontiac, Michigan, the largest producer of transit buses in the world. In 1952, the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) would purchase the Chicago Motor Coach Company.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781467102452
Publisher:	Arcadia Publishing SC
Publication date:	01/14/2019
Series:	Images of America Series
Pages:	128
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

Author John F. Doyle was raised in Chicago, about 30 yards from a Chicago Motor Coach bus stop in front of his North Side apartment building. The first words he learned to read were on the sides of those magnificent green-and-yellow buses—"Chicago Motor Coach Company." Having a lifetime interest in transportation, Doyle founded the Kenosha Streetcar Society in 2002 and authored Kenosha on the Go with Arcadia in 2008. Join us one more time and "Go the Motor Coach Way" to "See Chicago, the City Beautiful."

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments 6

Introduction 7

1 Open Air to Everywhere 11

2 See Chicago, the City Beautiful 29

3 Go the Motor Coach Way 49

4 The Boulevard Route 81

5 The Boulevard Division 103

About the Author 127