The Turner Gate and Elevated walkway to the Blue Line.
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The Site of Turner Gate
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A tall concrete pillar bearing the name UIC, once attached to the second-story walkway in this location, marks the site of Turner Gate. When the Circle campus opened in 1965, an eight-foot-high brick wall punctuated by eight iron gates surrounded most of the area bounded by Harrison, Halsted, Taylor, and Morgan Streets. Turner Gate was the entry point for those reaching campus via the “L.”
Although outer walls and gates are traditional elements of university design, the surrounding community expressed dismay to find the new University of Illinois campus walled off from the city it was built to serve. Before long the gates fell into disuse, the walls began to come down, and university buildings sprang up beyond the original boundaries. When the gate in this location disappeared, so did the name. Only remnants of the original walls remain.
The Turner Gate was named for Jonathan Baldwin Turner, whose appeal in 1850 for a “state university for the industrial classes” led to the Land Grant Act of 1862 and the formation of the University of Illinois in the years that followed.
