Slot Machines for Bars in Edison Park, Chicago

History

German farmers staked claims to the land in the 1830s, among them the Ebinger family, and a tavern along Milwaukee Road served farmers and the Native Americans who still traveled the old trail. The railroad came in the early 1850s, and developers tried two paper suburbs, Canfield and Ridgelawn, before Edison Park grew in the 1890s. It claimed to be the first Northwest Side community with electricity, and its boosters pitched artesian water, a fire company run by volunteers, a hotel and a big railroad depot. Students in Maine Township faced a trip of many miles to Maine West High School, so residents chose to annex to Chicago in 1910 and send their children by rail to Carl Schurz High School. After World War I, bungalows and Dutch colonials outnumbered the older, larger houses, and by 1930 the population had more than quadrupled, to 5,370. In the 1950s builders filled the last empty lots with brick bungalows, and the business center took on an Italian character, with grocery stores and bakeries. The Chicago Park District began leasing the old Ebinger School in 1936, and the Edison Park fieldhouse grew out of that building.

The area today

Metra's Union Pacific Northwest line serves Edison Park at a station on Olmsted Avenue, where CTA route 68 and Pace route 209 connect. The community lies in the far northwest corner of Chicago, 13 miles northwest of the Loop. The park that shares the community's name, on Northwest Highway, holds a fieldhouse and playground on less than an acre, and park and community alike take the name of inventor Thomas Alva Edison. Monument Park, on Avondale Avenue beside the railroad tracks, keeps a granite pillar topped by a limestone eagle from the old Cook County Courthouse, a memorial raised after World War I. West of Harlem Avenue, Olympia Park has a baseball field, gymnasium, tennis courts and a water spray feature.

Bars and restaurants here

The Sun-Times called two blocks of Northwest Highway and Olmsted Avenue Restaurant Row in 2018, and Block Club used the name in 2023 for a strip serving nearby suburbanites as well as Chicagoans. An Edison Park native and his wife opened Brennan's Gourmet Burger Shack inside The Emerald Isle bar and grill at 6686 N. Northwest Highway in May 2026, saying they want to bring more people to Edison Park's downtown. EP Fresh Market opened at 6783 N. Northwest Highway in March 2026, in the former Happy Foods, with a taqueria and bakery. Edison Park Fest began in 1972 as a sidewalk sale on Northwest Highway and in August 2025 ran at Oliphant and Olmsted Avenues.