The Siren Board

The tbolt on the roof of Enterprise Oil and Lubricants located at 33rd and Western Ave and next to I-55 is gone. They put a new roof on the building and as a result, the siren is gone. It is nowhere to be found and I cant find the roofing co that did the work. Its not really that big a loss though as this was the absolute worst tbolt Ive seen. Completely rusted out. When they shut the old system down in 1995 only 15 of 88 sirens actually worked, I think this was one of the ones that didnt. For those of you unfamiliar with this unit, it sat on a roof and it was level with the expressway, you could actually look into the mouth of the horn as you drove by. This is the reason it got so rusted, being level with the expressway. 50 years of them salting the expressway in the winter took its toll. Just thought Id let everyone know.

Brendan Ahern wrote:The tbolt on the roof of Enterprise Oil and Lubricants located at 33rd and Western Ave and next to I-55 is gone. They put a new roof on the building and as a result, the siren is gone. It is nowhere to be found and I cant find the roofing co that did the work. Its not really that big a loss though as this was the absolute worst tbolt Ive seen. Completely rusted out. When they shut the old system down in 1995 only 15 of 88 sirens actually worked, I think this was one of the ones that didnt. For those of you unfamiliar with this unit, it sat on a roof and it was level with the expressway, you could actually look into the mouth of the horn as you drove by. This is the reason it got so rusted, being level with the expressway. 50 years of them salting the expressway in the winter took its toll. Just thought Id let everyone know.

Hmm, that siren seems oddly familiar. I think i have seen it a long time
ago. Wouldnt they have to ask the city about doing something with the siren,
sicne it does belong to the city of Chicago?

That siren used to belong to Chicago, but as of August of 1995 the system has been abandoned. I have even called the city looking for info and they say they have no records of any of the sirens that are still up. So that means that according to the City of Chicago, the sirens that are still up dont even exist.

Thats pretty careless of them. but since its a big city, i'm not surprised.
They should have auctioned them off.

Its not all that careless. They did disconnect the power to them. Most have been removed and only a handful remain, most are on private property but there is one at midway airport, 2 on fire stations and an stl-10 on a school. The 2 I know of at fire stations are on stations that are no longer used by the FD. The one on the school just looks hard to remove, etc. Funny thing is there is a 2001 next to the school, so far thats the only drop in replacement ive seen.