CTA yanks up ‘Commuter Carpet’ artwork at Brown Line station
For almost 20 years, the CTA has rolled out the carpet for Brown Line commuters using the Francisco stop in Ravenswood.
But the magic carpet’s ride is coming to an end.
The agency is removing the popular Commuter Carpet, a colorful 60-foot long glass-and-marble public art installation designed to resemble an Oriental rug.
CTA users have been walking across — and looking down at — the artwork since 2007.
But getting walked-on all those years, plus nearly two decades of Chicago winters, has caused the mosaic tiles to come up in clumps and has required CTA workers to start removing the work entirely.
“The tiles loosen up and the grout work breaks up over time,” CTA spokesperson Catherine Hosinski said. “We’ve had repairs done to it, but it just continued to worsen and it got to the point where we had multiple consultants come out and they simply indicated that it is beyond repair.”
So is the CTA pulling the rug out from under one of its cleverest examples of public art?
Not quite. The agency, experts and Commuter Carpet’s creator, Brooklyn, New York-based artist Ellen Harvey, are working to figure out a new life for the mosaic.
“This is really a beloved artwork, and we didn’t want to completely end up having to remove it and then not have any of it at the station,” CTA Public Art Project Consultant Elizabeth Karpowicz said.
Public transit, public art
The CTA has about 150 pieces of art — some permanent, some temporary — on display in its stations and properties.
And much of it is really good, such as Carlos “Dzine” Rolon’s striking Time is the Enemy, a kinetic-looking work made of Venetian glass, stone and marble that has enlivened the Brown Line’s Sedgwick station in Old Town since 2009.
There’s also the glass mosaic Promise (for tomorrow from the past looking to the future) by Folayemi “Fo” Wilson and blkHaUS Studios adorning the Green Line’s Damen station that opened in 2024. The work honors the ethnic and racial groups who’ve called the West Side home.
Good public art can take a bit of the edge off the commute. When done well, it also contributes to the design of an L station or even an otherwise mundane-looking bus turnaround, as is the case with Shinique Smith’s Sunburst, a lively work of paint and aluminum that is at the Madison Street bus’s end of the line at Austin Boulevard.
Commuter Carpet was created for the Francisco station’s entrance ramp, as part of the $530 million Brown Line expansion project.
The work was a bit of an experiment. The CTA had never placed a mosaic artwork in the ground before, and the agency installed an underground heating mechanism to keep the work relatively snow-free.
But why does it resemble a long run of carpet?
“[Harvey’s] concept that in Ravenswood is a residential area for the most part, [with] older homes — probably hardwood floors and floors and rugs,” Karpowicz said. “So the one at the station is an extension [of what is] in people’s homes.”
Making the best of a difficult situation
Karpowicz said the CTA and mosaic experts will use salvaged sections of Commuter Carpet to create new wall displays inside the Francisco station house.
The artwork should be up in the first half of 2026, according to the CTA.
“I was fine with whatever they wanted to do, but would obviously like to save as much as possible,” Harvey said. “It was clear that the mosaic couldn’t safely continue as it was.”
Harvey will be a part of creating the new work.
“I want to support [the CTA] as I know how hard it is to commission public art these days,” she said. “And I know they are doing the best they can with a difficult situation.”
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