Chicago L Hubbard Curve
Matted prints are a great option if you want to choose your own frame. They come in two sizes: 8x10" and 16x20". These are standard frame sizes. You may easily find these frames at any retail shop.
One thing you need to know about frames. Those cheap, thin frames with swivel locks and kickstands will not work. They are designed for simple photo prints or diplomas. The matted print will be too thick for these frames. Find a decent frame that is at least 1" deep.
I make every print myself in my studio. No photo lab. No outsourcing. Every print is handmade.
I print on metallic photo paper. It is the perfect paper for black-and-white architectural photography. It adds a distinctive pearlescent, three-dimensional sheen to the prints.
For mats, I use 4-ply Crescent Arctic White matboard. It is off-white, traditional, and restrained. Not bright white, which is too bright and overwhelms the image. This matboard is the archival standard for conservation framing.
I mount prints on 3/16" Bainbridge foamcore. It is acid-free, clay-coated, rigid, and lightweight. It is ideal for archival print mounting.
The print is permanently sealed between the mat and the mounting board. It is intentional. A hinge mount leaves the print too loose. Also, it causes the print to bulge in the middle. A sealed mount keeps the print flat and tight. If you need a hinge mount or a matboard backing instead of foamcore, let me know.
Every print is signed and numbered (limited edition) on the mat in pencil. On the back, you will find a Certificate of Authenticity with all the details about the print and my contact information.
The actual photo print size for an 8x10” matted print is 6x6” with a 1” mat border, and for a 16x20” print, it is 12x12” with a 2” mat border. Since the photo prints are square and the matted prints are rectangular, the bottom mat border for 8x10” prints is 2” and for 16x20” prints it is 6”.
A framed print is a finished artwork. It is not just the image, it is a physical object that looks intentional, lasts decades, and feels complete.
The frame color, finish, and moulding profile. Print mounting, matting, and glazing. These are all deliberate decisions that elevate the image to the level of an artwork, which you can hold in your hands, put on the wall, and live with every day.
I am a professional framer, and I enjoy making frames for my prints. I put a lot of thought into what frame to use for my prints. And how to mat, glaze, and mount them. And after decades of frame-making, I acquired the skills to make my prints perfect, exactly the way I want them. I am proud of what I do.
I make every print myself in my studio. No photo lab. No outsourcing. Every print is personally crafted by me.
I start with printing the image on one of my large-format printers. I use glossy metallic photo paper almost exclusively. It is the perfect paper for black-and-white architectural photography. It adds a distinctive pearlescent, three-dimensional sheen to the print. In a bright spotlight, it looks like a hologram.
For glazing, I seal the print with archival 5-mil PET film, featuring a unique, high-gloss “mirror-like” finish. There is only one manufacturer of this glazing, the price has doubled in recent years, and it is issued in small batches that sell out instantly. But the result is worth the trouble. It gives the print that elusive look of a silver gelatin print from a traditional darkroom, which was treated with a vintage photo heat glossier.
I have been a photographer all my life, and I still have my traditional darkroom. I can produce small silver gelatin prints, but large 44x44” prints are obviously out of reach with this old technology. I am happy that I can replicate that look and feel for the prints on any scale with the new technology I developed.
But this is my choice. If you prefer to use museum anti-reflective glass sheets, please let me know. I can do that, but the print prices may double (since glass is expensive), and delivery will be limited to Chicagoland only (because it is glass and it breaks in shipping).
I permanently mount my prints to white aluminum Dibond sheets using archival pressure-sensitive high-tack acrylic adhesive. It is not a simple process. I use a heavy 750-pound, 60” wide large-format laminator to complete this task. And it is the most dangerous and nerve-racking stage in the whole printmaking process. A tiny misalignment or a speck of debris on the surface can ruin the almost-finished print.
Finally, the print is ready for framing. Frame-making is where a woodworker meets an artist. It is a totally different set of skills, materials, instruments, and studio space.
Over the years, I developed relationships with several suppliers, and I get my frame moulding delivered by truck in large, long boxes. I believe my studio stocks more frame moulding than your average frame shop down the street.
I cut the moulding at 45 degrees using my mitre saw mounted on a custom 10-foot-long, heavy-duty feed bench I built long ago. I then join the cut sticks with a pneumatic v-nailer to make a square frame. Now the finishing touches: I sand and paint the frame corners to make them even and smooth.
Now it is time to put the print and the frame together. I secure the print inside the frame with flexible points and install the hanging wire (or D-rings for the large prints). I sign the print, attach the Certificate of Authenticity, and the print is ready.
Now, let’s talk about the frames I use for my prints. In my opinion, black-and-white photography does not require elaborate framing. A simple but sophisticated matte black frame is all that is needed. It is like the famous Audrey Hepburn’s "little black dress" designed by Hubert de Givenchy for the movie “Breakfast at Tiffany's”. It became iconic and has been described as "perhaps the most famous little black dress of all time." Accordingly, a “little black frame” is all that is needed for my prints.
For 16x16” prints, I use a simple 3/4” matte black frame, but it is 1 1/8” tall, which adds a touch of sophistication. It looks proportional to the relatively small size of the 16x16” print.
For 24x24” and 32x32” prints, I use the same style but a different profile frame. It is a wider 1 1/4" frame, which works for larger print sizes. And it is not as tall, only 7/8", which keeps the prints more grounded on the wall and less overpowering.
For large 44x44” prints, the frame design requires a totally different approach. Compared to smaller prints, the large print is a statement, it is a centerpiece of the room. It is a celebration, and the "little black dress" concept doesn’t work here. It needs a bit of exuberance. At the same time, it has to be constrained and confident. Like a Rolls-Royce brand identity.
To meet this challenge, I came up with a design of two different frames stacked together to form a unified frame for large prints.
The main frame is one of the most expensive frames I used, a custom frame made in Italy. It is 2” tall and 2” wide. It is a block, but it has a bevel on the inside. The beauty is in color, or to be precise, in color gradation. It is dark charcoal on the outer sides, which gradually transforms into a patina of silver leaf on the inner bevel through dark copper leaf on the front side. The beauty is that the gradation is not even, it looks painted by hand. It looks authentic, rustic, and antique.
The secondary frame is 1 1/8" wide, and it has a similar rustic, scratched, antique look, but it is pewter, which is almost the same color tonality as a photographic print it frames. It is more restrained than the primary frame and works well as a separator. Also, it has this chiseled, rough edge, another detail that adds authenticity to the whole frame.
I owe you a clarification about print sizes. The framed print sizes listed on my website (16x16”, 24x24”, 32x32”, and 44x44”) refer to the sizes of prints mounted on the board before framing. But with the frame included, the outside dimensions will be obviously larger. Also, because of the white space (1” or 2”) around the image to separate it from the frame, the actual print size is smaller. Here is the table with all dimensions:
| Framed Print | Outside Dimensions | White Space | Actual Print |
| 16x16” | 17x17” | 2" | 12x12" |
| 24x24” | 26x26" | 2" | 20x20" |
| 32x32" | 34x34" | 2" | 28x28" |
| 44x44" | 50x50" | 1" | 42x42" |
And here is the sample picture to explain the dimensions table:
These are the standard frame options I offer on my website. If you need a custom frame or print sizes, please reach out to me, and I would be happy to help.
A photo print is an option if you want to frame it yourself or have a frame shop you know and trust that will frame it for you.
A photo print is just a loose print that I will send to you in a shipping tube.
I make prints myself in my studio. I use glossy metallic photo paper almost exclusively. It is the perfect paper for black-and-white architectural photography. It adds a distinctive pearlescent, three-dimensional sheen to the print.
The prints are part of a limited edition. They are signed and numbered just below the print. The Certificate of Authenticity is enclosed with the print.
I offer on my website three different sizes for photo prints: 24x24”, 32x32”, and 44x44”. If you need a custom size print, please let me know.
Split print is a great option if you want to go big, really big, up to 10 feet or maybe even bigger. It is a great option for office lobbies and for any place with large, tall walls.
There is a little “behind-the-scenes” story about split prints. I used to offer 60x60” on my website, but it was a mixed bag. First of all, that was the maximum print size I could make because all the materials (backing board, glass, etc.) do not come in sizes bigger than 60x60”. That was the ceiling I could not break. Second, the shipping of these prints was a nightmare. They are big and had to be shipped freight in a crate (not cheap), and every second print I shipped came back damaged, with big holes poked by careless forklift drivers at the sorting facilities.
There had to be a solution to these problems. And I found it in split prints.
Split print is a square print divided into nine (3 by 3) or more smaller squares. 60x60” print becomes a set of nine 20x20” prints, and 120x120” print is a set of nine 40x40” prints. No frame is required for this print presentation, as these are acrylic prints.
Acrylic print is a print on metallic photo paper face-mounted on a 1/4” thick sheet of acrylic (with polished edges) and sandwiched for strength with a sheet of aluminum Dibond. It is a modern, contemporary way to present a photographic print.
Because these are relatively small prints, compared to the final result, they can be shipped on a palette, which eliminates the shipping damage I had before. Plus, they are not heavy, and one person can easily put them on a wall using cleat hangers.
The best practice is to leave about a 1/4" or 1/2" gap between the acrylic print tiles. Since the edges of the acrylic prints are polished and the acrylic is quite thick at 1/4", it creates an interesting optical effect like looking through water.
If you are in the Chicagoland area, I will get you in touch with an installation guy I trust and have used for years, and he will help you install the split print in your home or office.
Each fine art print is produced specifically for you.
From the moment your order is confirmed, your print enters a deliberate production process: printing, inspection, drying, mounting, framing, final quality control, and secure packaging for shipping. Nothing is rushed. Every step is completed in-house to ensure consistency, precision, and permanence.
For matted prints and 16x16” framed prints, the production takes 1-2 days. For large framed prints, it takes 3-4 days.
If you are in the Chicagoland area, the shipping takes only one day. Large prints, I will deliver personally. I will contact you to schedule a delivery date and time that is convenient for you.
If you are outside of Chicago, the shipping takes 2-3 days, standard UPS Ground transit time. Large prints will be shipped in a crate built out of lumber and plywood. To open it, you might need a screwdriver, there will be many screws to remove.
You will receive an email with shipping tracking information once your order is ready for shipping.
Because most of the work is handmade in the studio, minor variations are part of the object's character. The result is not a mass-produced item, but a permanent piece crafted with attention.
Split prints are the only option I outsource to the photo lab. But I guarantee the quality of the prints because they are made under my supervision. Delivery time for split prints is about two weeks, but it can vary depending on the scope of the project.
If you have a specific deadline, please contact me before placing your order, and I will do my best to accommodate your timeline without compromising quality.
Each work is produced to order and crafted individually in my studio. Because of this, my payment and refund policies reflect the seriousness and permanence of the object.
Payments
Full payment is required at the time of purchase to secure your edition and initiate production.
I accept major credit cards and other secure payment methods at checkout. Production begins once payment is received.
There is an option at the checkout for “Payment in Person”. Please use it if you want to reserve your print but need to customize it and are unsure of the exact price. I will email you the invoice, which you can safely pay on my website later.
Refunds and Returns
All prints are made to order. As such, sales are considered final.
I do not offer refunds for change of mind, incorrect size selection, or personal preference. I encourage collectors to review dimensions, framing options, and placement carefully before purchasing.
If your work arrives damaged in transit, please contact me within 48 hours of delivery with photographs of the packaging and the piece. I will repair or replace the work as appropriate.
In the rare event of a production defect, I will make it right.
Cancellations
Orders may be cancelled within 24 hours of purchase, provided production has not yet begun. After production starts, cancellations are not possible.
I stand behind the quality, craftsmanship, and permanence of every piece. If you have questions before purchasing, I am always available to assist.
ADDRESS: Intersection of West Hubbard Street and North Wells Street in Chicago, IL
YEARS BUILT: 1896-1900
Chicago does not apologize for its infrastructure.
Stand at the corner of Hubbard and Wells on a weekday morning. Wait. You will hear the train before you see it: a low metallic rumble building from the north, then the screech, the grinding shriek of steel wheel flanges pressing against the outer rail as the Brown Line leans into its curve. For a moment, the entire intersection vibrates. The train hangs above you, massive and unhurried, sparks occasionally flashing under the wheels. Then it passes, and the city returns to its usual noise.
You have just experienced 120 years of the consequences of decisions made to resolve impossible problems.
Here is what no one tells you about the Hubbard Curve: it should not exist.
No engineer designing a transit line from scratch would choose a ninety-foot radius turn in the middle of a dense urban corridor. The physics forbid it. The tighter the curve, the harder the wheel flanges bite the rail, the louder the screech, the faster the track wears, the slower the train must crawl. Modern rail designers require radii of several hundred feet for comfortable, efficient operation.
The Hubbard Curve is ninety feet because of a man named Charles Tyson Yerkes.
In the 1890s, Yerkes controlled Chicago's transit franchises the way a chess player controls the board: not by moving pieces elegantly, but by making the opponent's moves impossible. When his Northwestern Elevated Railroad needed to thread into the Union Loop from the north, he faced a problem. Franklin Street was the logical alignment. But Wells Street, four blocks west, controlled the politics. Industrial interests along Wells, the factories and warehouses that needed workers from the north side, wanted the elevated line. Retail merchants along Franklin feared the noise and shadow. Yerkes chose his allies strategically and locked in the Wells Street alignment through a single franchise that covered both the Loop's west leg and his unbuilt Northwestern line at once.
The result: to carry trains from Franklin to Wells, the tracks had to pivot twice in a tight S-curve at Hubbard Street, within an eighty-foot right-of-way, within a city grid that offered no compromise. The curve was not an engineering decision. It was a political one, poured in concrete and riveted in steel, and it still operates today.
The Northwestern Elevated opened revenue service on May 31, 1900, after a dramatic inauguration the previous December when police arrested the train crew, company officials took the controls, and ran the train onto Lake Street tracks to evade a blockade of railroad ties. Chicago was already that city then: the one where infrastructure and theater arrived together.
Engineers do not fight geometry. They negotiate with it.
To carry a train through a ninety-foot radius without derailing, the track must be superelevated: the outer rail raised higher than the inner rail so the train leans into the curve, using gravity against centrifugal force. The equilibrium equation is simple and unforgiving. With a gauge of four feet eight and a half inches, even low speeds demand substantial banking. Get it wrong, and the train doesn't just screech. It fails.
By the 1920s, engineers had introduced spiral transition curves, gradual entries into the bend that replaced the original abrupt angle. The timber decking was replaced with reinforced steel framing. The original riveted plate girders, which arc between vertical columns anchored into concrete footings below the pavement, were stiffened with diagonal bracing to resist the lateral forces that push outward on every curve. The outer rail wears faster than the inner rail here. It always has. The curve is inspected and maintained more intensely than any straight section on the line.
The Wells Street Bridge, immediately south of the curve, presented its own set of problems. The river had to be crossed. The original 1888 swing bridge had to be replaced without stopping commerce or transit. In December 1921, engineers built the new bascule leaves around the still-operational swing bridge. Then they rotated the old bridge open, cut it apart with oxyacetylene torches, and floated the pieces away on barges. The new leaves lowered into place. The entire maneuver halted elevated service for fifty-nine hours.
Fifty-nine hours. To replace a railroad bridge across a major river while the city watched.
Chicago chose continuity. It always does.
In the mid-twentieth century, American cities looked at their elevated rail lines and made a choice. Most of them tore them down. Chicago debated it. The city's planners argued, the politicians weighed in, and the consultants delivered their reports. And then Chicago reinforced the structure instead.
This was not nostalgia. It was pragmatism confronting reality. Seventy thousand people ride through the Hubbard Curve daily. The Brown and Purple Lines, the North Side Main Line, feed into the Union Loop at Tower 18, at Lake and Wells, historically the busiest railroad junction in the world. You cannot replace that capacity. You can only maintain it, upgrade it, and find ways to make a ninety-foot radius work in the twenty-first century.
Between 2004 and 2009, the CTA executed the Brown Line Capacity Expansion Project, extending platform infrastructure from six-car to eight-car configurations to accommodate ridership that had grown by more than a third since the late 1990s. The project cost over a billion dollars and was plagued by multiple delays and problems.
These are not embarrassments. They are the texture of maintaining infrastructure at scale, across a century, in a climate that freezes steel and bakes asphalt in alternating seasons.
The noise problem was solved last. The wheel squeal at the Hubbard Curve had become a political issue again, this time not for warehouses and printing houses but for the hotels and restaurants that had moved beneath the tracks. The CTA introduced the special grease, a lubricant that adheres to rails in rain and cold, across the full range of Chicago weather, and reduces friction between the wheel flange and the gauge corner. The screech diminished. The track wear slowed. The gauge corner, which had been grinding away at an accelerated rate for decades, began to last longer.
Geometry made audible became, at last, geometry managed.
Here is what you need to understand about the Hubbard Curve: it is not a relic. It is not a tourist attraction or an architectural curiosity preserved behind glass. It is a working piece of infrastructure, moving seventy thousand people through a political decision made in the 1890s, every single day, in a city that has never once apologized for the noise it makes.
River North grew up around it. The warehouses and printing houses gave way to galleries, then to restaurants, then to glass-tower residences whose windows look out directly onto the elevated structure. What was once a liability became atmosphere. Restaurants open their patios beneath the tracks. Photographers wait at the corner of Hubbard and Wells for the precise moment a train enters the bend, headlights cutting through the steel lattice, sparks briefly lighting the undercarriage.
The same curve that triggered lawsuits in 1905 is now sold as a feature.
This is not irony. This is what happens when infrastructure outlasts the civilization that built it and enters the next one intact. The tracks were laid for an industrial city that needed to move workers at scale. That city is gone. The tracks remain. They carry a different population through a different economy over the same geometry, the same ninety-foot radius, the same superelevated outer rail, the same riveted plate girders arcing between columns sunk into the same street.
In winter, the steel contracts and the screech sharpens. In summer, warm air carries the sound deeper into the side streets. At night, the sparks flash under the wheels as they negotiate the arc, brief and indifferent, the same sparks that flashed in 1900 when a company official took the controls and dared the police to stop him.
Go stand there. Let a train pass over you. Have an experience of the vibration moving through the pavement and into your feet.
You are standing on a decision made by a man who died in 1905, a curve laid down in a city that no longer exists, maintained by engineers solving problems that did not exist when the steel was first riveted into place, carrying people who have never heard the name Charles Tyson Yerkes.
That is what it means to build something that lasts.
The city does not explain itself. It lives and moves on.
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