1973:  A Longstanding Chicago-Area Transit Station is Shut Down — But Not Before It Achieves Classic TV Immortality

 

July 16, 1973

A rapid transit station at 1215 Isabella Street in the Chicago suburb of Evanston was closed permanently. Isabella station served the Evanston Line (the present-day Purple Line) of the Chicago “L” (short for “elevated”), which is operated by the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA). This station had been opened on April 1, 1912, and it was ultimately shut down due to CTA budget cuts.

All of these years later, however, Isabella station has maintained a sort of pop culture notoriety due to its cameo appearance in the opening credits of The Bob Newhart Show. This highly regarded sitcom, which made its debut in 1972 and ran until 1978, features comedian Bob Newhart (a native of the Chicago-area village of Oak Park) as a psychologist named Bob Hartley. Hartley, whose practice is based in the downtown section of Chicago, lives there in the city with his wife Emily. (She was played by Suzanne Pleshette).

The montage in this show’s opening sequence focuses on what turns out to be an unquestionably convoluted return trip home for anyone familiar with the geography of that region and the overall layout of CTA. Perhaps the most head-scratching aspect of this part of Dr. Hartley’s daily commute is that he travels on a train to Isabella station and then walks the rest of the way to his apartment in the community of Edgewater on the North Side of Chicago — a distance of 6.5 miles (10.5 kilometers).

While this unconventional trek has traditionally been attributed to faulty editing in continuity, Newhart offered a different take on it during an interview with late-night TV talk show host Conan O’ Brien. “I miss my stop and walk back 55 blocks to our apartment,” explained Newhart. “Now, would you want a therapist who missed his stop every day?”

(The accompanying photo of Isabella station was taken in 1968.)

Photo Credit: David L. Wilson (https://www.flickr.com/people/32693718@N07) – licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

For more information on Isabella station, please check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabella_station

The opening sequence of The Bob Newhart Show is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-PLEhiOeVA