Here's a picture I took yesterday of the former Peanut Specialty spur crossing Halsted and the former Chicago Surface Lines street car tracks. Some very interesting, heavy-duty, wide, outer (vs. guard) rail. It also looks like a faint outline of the curving spur can be seen on the east side of Halsted, just past the billboard.
From the old maps it would appear that the current Storage Mart building is the former Peanut Specialty, Inc., building. It appears on the 1971 and 1955 engineering diagrams. Also served by this track that cut across Halsted at Hooker was a Sealy Mattress plant where the Greyhound bus terminal now sits. The 1955 track diagram shows the spur dividing into two tracks once it crossed Halsted, with one spur for Peanut Specialty and the other for Sealy. However both Sealy and the second track were gone by the 1971 track diagram.
According to an online article I found the Primrose Candy Company of Chicago "purchased the salt water taffy, line and panning equipment for French burnt peanut and Boston Baked Beans from the Peanut Specialty Com. in 1980...which required the company to acquire an adjoining building near its present site in order to accommodate the new production lines."
So Peanut Specialty went out of business between 1971 and 1980.
Source is
http://www.candyindustry.com/Articles/Cover_Story/BNP_GUID_9-5-2006_A_10000000000000425748
