CTA yanks up 'Commuter Carpet' artwork at Brown Line station

Chicago Sun Times / by Lee Bey / July 9, 2025
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? Read More Here.