Slot Machines for Bars in Dunning, Chicago

History

Cook County bought 160 acres from Peter Ludby in 1851 for a poor farm and an asylum, on land hemmed in by Irving Park Road and Narragansett, Montrose and Oak Park Avenues. After the Civil War, a farmer named Andrew Dunning bought 120 acres to the south to start a nursery and a village, but the hospital next door kept settlers away. A rail line reached the county grounds in 1882, and the county named its station for Dunning. Around the turn of the twentieth century, Henry Kolze turned a tavern and wooded acreage at Narragansett and Irving Park into a picnic grove, and once the Irving Park Boulevard streetcar ran, clubs, churches and companies held outings there. After 1910 the county moved the poor farm to Oak Forest, and two years later the state bought the hospital and its grounds for one dollar. In 1916 Schorsch Brothers Real Estate bought a tract west of Austin and south of Irving Park and called it West Portage Park, to shed the stigma of Dunning. After World War I the population rose to 4,019, mostly of Swedish, German and Polish descent, and it peaked at 43,856 in 1970.

The area today

The Chicago-Read Mental Health Center, established in 1970, took in the old hospitals. The Dunning Read Natural Area at 4050 North Oak Park Avenue covers 20 acres of prairie, wetlands and woodland, with about a mile of mulch trails, and the Park District calls it a popular spot for birding. Wilbur Wright College, established as a junior college in 1934, has had its campus at Narragansett and Montrose since 1993, in five interconnected buildings designed by Bertrand Goldberg. The Dunning branch of the Chicago Public Library opened in 2011 on land the Chicago Board of Education donated. Schorsch Village, Belmont Heights, Belmont Terrace and Irving Woods are among the neighborhoods of this community area, 10 miles northwest of the Loop.

Bars and restaurants here

Harlem Avenue has its own Little Italy, which Block Club Chicago profiled in 2024. In the 3400 block of North Harlem, the Bartucci family built the Piazza Italia shopping center in 1979 and filled it with Italian shops, opened Pasta Fresh in 1988, and saw a son open a restaurant on Harlem in 2014. On Irving Park Road, a sports bar opened in 2014 in a space a tavern had held for about 30 years. On Harlem Avenue, Block Club's 2026 patio guide lists Social Junkie at 3848 N. Harlem, a bar with pool and live music. Over on Narragansett, a Greek spot was reviewed in August 2026 for its pork gyros, with takeout and a dining room.