Slot Machines for Bars in Fulton Market, Chicago

History

Armour, Swift and Morris, the "big three" packers, worked from the Union Stock Yards, but each kept a branch house on Fulton Market Street, where dressed meat was received and stored before it went to retail buyers. In 1886 construction of a Jackson Street bridge pushed a wholesale meat market out of its home, and twenty-two of its packers formed an association and bought land on either side of Fulton Market Street. Architect William Strippelman designed a pair of brick market buildings for them, finished in 1887. Early renderings show terra-cotta bulls' heads on the parapets.

In 1962, the City's landmark report says, eighty meat, poultry and fish businesses on Fulton Market Street employed 1,300 people, and businesses along the street distributed 75 percent of the city's meat, poultry and fish. Chain grocers had the buying power to skip wholesalers and buy directly from producers, and the Kennedy Expressway, finished in 1960, removed market buildings to the east while improving transportation access for businesses in the market district. WBEZ noted in 2013 that since the 1990s the district had taken in condominiums, galleries, restaurants and, lately, offices.

The area today

A City Council ordinance passed July 29, 2015 designated the Fulton-Randolph Market District a Chicago Landmark, and the City says permits for buildings inside it are reviewed for effects on exterior features visible from public streets. The City's 2015 report found meatpackers, food distributors and manufacturers concentrated on Fulton, with thirty-two food wholesaling companies in the landmark district. Of the two 1887 market buildings, it found the south-side one converted to retail and apartments and part of the north-side one, partly destroyed by a mid-1960s fire, still used for meatpacking. In 2013 Google said it would move its Chicago office into the old Fulton Market Cold Storage warehouse at 1000 W. Fulton, then in a gut rehab. The Morgan station, at 958 W. Lake, serves the Green and Pink Lines; the report credited its 2012 opening and the coming tech jobs with fueling real estate development.

Bars and restaurants here

The City's Fulton Market streetscape project, whose first phase was celebrated in November 2018, formalized angled and parallel parking as loading zones during industrial hours and parking during entertainment hours, and kept raised sidewalks and dock areas on certain blocks. Bisnow reported in 2018 that Soho House opened in 2014 and the Ace Hotel followed in spring 2017. In January 2026 Block Club described Gin Alley, a historic building at 120 N. Green St., as home to lofts, boutiques and restaurants. Block Club reported in 2023 that one of Fulton Market's last remaining butcher shops was moving to North Lawndale, its president saying other vendors were leaving the neighborhood.