Slot Machines for Bars in Canaryville, Chicago

History

The Union Stock Yard opened on Christmas Day 1865, outside the city line in Lake Township. Canaryville began as a middle-class, largely German Protestant community that included the family of Gustavus Swift; its settlers worked as clerks, cattle buyers and managers. Lower-middle-class Irish Catholics followed soon after, and by the early twentieth century Halsted Street was the commercial center of a largely Irish Canaryville, with saloons serving the packing trade. The name may have come from the sparrows that fed on stockyard refuse and spilled grain; it was also applied to the neighborhood's rambunctious youth, its "wild canaries." St. Gabriel parish, organized in 1880 by Father Maurice Dorney, was primarily Irish and drew its support from stockyard workers. The cornerstone of the present church, a Romanesque design by Burnham and Root, was laid at 45th and Lowe in May 1887. The International Amphitheater, commissioned in 1934 at 42nd and Halsted, hosted five presidential nominating conventions, including the 1968 Democratic convention, and concerts by the Beatles and Elvis. The major packinghouses closed between 1952 and 1962, the stockyards in 1971, and demolition of the Amphitheater began in 1999.

The area today

Canaryville has stayed largely Irish, with a sizable Mexican community, and it is tight-knit, a place where people volunteer for the ballfield. The Canaryville Little League, founded in 1953, plays at 45th Place and Normal and enrolled a record 450 kids in the summer of 2014. Taylor-Lauridsen Park at 704 W. 42nd, long known as Boyce Field, carries the names of two neighbors killed in 1976 after stepping in to help a teenager. The library branch at 642 W. 43rd opened in 2001. The Stock Yards Bank has stood at Halsted and Root since 1925. CTA buses run along Halsted (the 8), 43rd Street (the 43) and 47th Street (the 47).

Bars and restaurants here

If you run a room on Wallace Street, you are among the corner taverns, with a few private social and athletic clubs nearby. Some establishments here have applied with the state for video gaming licenses.