Slot Machines for Bars in Belmont Cragin, Chicago

History

The first business here was a saloon. George Merrill opened it at Armitage and Grand Avenues, catering to truck farmers who carried produce to the city over the plank road, and the corner became known as Whiskey Point. The land stayed rural until the early 1880s, when Cragin Brothers & Company moved a tin plate and sheet iron plant onto 11 acres nearby and the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad built a station at Leclaire Avenue. Plants developed in Hanson Park and Galewood as Belt Railway service extended, and a brick and tile company found Galewood's superior clay soil. The area was annexed to Chicago as part of Jefferson Township in 1889. W. F. Hall Printing Company built on 17 acres beside the Northwestern tracks in 1922. Swedish, German and Irish workers were among the first, then Poles and Italians, and by 1930 the population reached 60,221. Builders filled the blocks with bungalows, Cape Cods and two-flats, and in the 1930s the area became known as Belmont Cragin. Hall Printing and other plants had closed by 1995. The Hispanic population grew from 3,072 in 1980 to 16,846 in 1990, and the 2000 census found the area 65 percent Hispanic.

The area today

Eight miles northwest of the Loop, Belmont Cragin has Metra's Hanson Park station at 5621 W. Armitage Avenue on the Milwaukee District West line, where CTA routes 65 and 85 connect. Riis Park, at 6100 W. Fullerton Avenue, came to the Northwest Park District in 1916 and stayed largely undeveloped until 1928, when a ski jump, golf course and fieldhouse arrived; landscape architect Alfred Caldwell designed its western half, fully built by 1940. Cragin Park, on Lockwood Avenue about halfway between Diversey and Fullerton, is one of thirteen parks the Northwest Park District created before it merged into the Chicago Park District in 1934, and it takes its name from the Cragin industrial suburb.

Bars and restaurants here

Block Club's 2026 patio guide lists Baha Restaurant at 4842 W. Diversey, a Mexican restaurant with an inviting outdoor space. Diversey is also the corridor where, at Narragansett, the Brickyard Shopping Mall, a regional shopping center, opened on the former Carey Brickyard property in March 1976.