This No. 532 cable grip car is a replica of the Chicago City Railroad cable grip cars. Between 1882 and 1897, cable grip cars traveled up and down State Street and around Chicago. Cable grip cars were the first complete form of mechanical urban mass transit and were created to replace horse cars. During the 1800s, people living in major cities complained about the slow, dirty, and unsanitary horse cars used on city streets for transportation, while animal activist protested the deplorable working conditions of the poor creatures that pulled these heavy loads. In 1869, Andrew S. Hallidie (1836 – 1900), a steel rope manufacturer, designed the cable grip car after witnessing a team of horses being whipped while attempting to climb the wet, slippery slope of Jackson Street on San Francisco’s treacherous Nob Hill. The cable grip car did not rely on horses but traveled by clamping on to a continuously moving steel rope running underneath the street.

During the winter of 1882, Chicago officially opened its cable grip lines. Horses which often floundered in the snow, were replaced by cable grip cars that found the foul weather to be no serious obstacle. The multiple-load cable grip car with a speed of 14 mph illustrated how mass urban transit could decrease street crowding and increase commuting distance without increasing travel time, which made mass transit more reliable. The Chicago City Railway became the largest and the most influential cable system in the United States, spawning cable systems in large cities like New York, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C. However, within fifteen years, cable grip cars were replaced by the electric trollies powered by overhead electric lines, which required no underground construction. Today, the original San Francisco cable grip car line is the last cable route in the entire world. It continues to operate to this day as a tourist attraction and is designated as a National Historic Landmark.