Slot Machines for Bars in Auburn Gresham, Chicago

History

The marshy ground that became the Auburn Park subdivision once belonged to William B. Ogden, Chicago's first mayor; speculators drained and platted it in 1872. German and Dutch farmers had settled first, and Irish railroad workers arrived as rail lines went through in the mid-1800s. The land belonged to the Town of Lake until Chicago annexed it in 1889. Streetcars did the rest. By 1918 the Halsted line reached 119th Street and the Racine and Ashland cars ran to 87th Street, so stockyard workers could ride the Halsted car to work and families from Bridgeport, Canaryville and Back of the Yards came south. Between 1920 and 1930 the number of residents nearly tripled, from 19,558 to 57,381, housed mostly in bungalows and two- and three-flats. Residents clustered around their own parishes. St. Sabina began on July 9, 1916, with a Mass said in a South Racine storefront and dedicated its Tudor Gothic church on June 18, 1933. Black families began moving into the area in the 1960s, and St. Sabina's history says the parish opened its doors to them.

The area today

79th Street is the main commercial corridor. The CTA's 79th Street bus runs east along it to the lakefront and has overnight service, and Halsted crosses it at what became a major point for streetcar transfers around the start of the twentieth century. The Greater Auburn Gresham Development Corporation turned a 1925 furniture store at 839 W. 79th Street into its Healthy Lifestyle Hub. The corporation's 79th Street Renaissance Festival, a street fair, dates to 2005. St. Sabina's church stands at 1210 W. 78th Place. Brick bungalows line the residential blocks, part of the city's so-called bungalow belt.

Bars and restaurants here

If your room is on 79th Street, you work a long commercial corridor of storefronts that has had its main crossing at Halsted since the streetcar days. Taverns are the usual license on record here, on 79th itself and on Ashland and Racine avenues farther south, two of the avenues the streetcars once ran down. A bar and grill on 79th holds patio and public place of amusement licenses. Bungalow and two-flat blocks run off the commercial streets, so a corner tavern here is a neighborhood bar first. At least one establishment here has applied with the state for video gaming licenses.