Slot Machines for Bars in Jefferson Park, Chicago

History

Traders and hunters followed Indian trails through the area before settlers arrived, and by 1836 a hotel, a school district and mostly English farmers were in place. Elijah Wentworth's two-story log tavern, later called the Jefferson Hotel, stood near where three trails met, the routes of Milwaukee, Higgins and Northwest Highway. After 1849 farmers moved produce to Chicago on two plank roads, the North West Plank Road, later Milwaukee Avenue, and the Lower Road, later Elston Avenue. The state formed Jefferson Township in 1850, named for President Thomas Jefferson, and residents platted a village near Milwaukee Avenue and Higgins Road in 1855. A railroad depot near the center brought more people, and the town of Jefferson was incorporated in 1872. By 1884 most newcomers were Polish and German immigrants, and Chicago annexed the town in 1889. Growth mushroomed in the 1920s, when graystones, A-frames and bungalows came to predominate. The Kennedy Expressway, finished in 1959, sliced diagonally through the neighborhood. The CTA built a transit terminal in 1970, and in 1979 the Copernicus Foundation bought the old Gateway cinema building on Lawrence Avenue for a Polish cultural center.

The area today

At the northwest edge of the city, ten miles from the Loop, the Jefferson Park Transit Center joins the Blue Line, Metra's UP-NW line and CTA and Pace buses, and the el runs in the median of the Kennedy. The Copernicus Center at 5216 W. Lawrence hosts concerts and community events, and every Labor Day weekend it holds Taste of Polonia, four days of music and Polish food. In 1990 nearly half of the community's 23,649 residents were of Polish descent, according to the Encyclopedia of Chicago. Jefferson Memorial Park, at Long and Higgins, has baseball fields, tennis courts, a playground, an outdoor pool and a brick fieldhouse from 1930. Gladstone Park, a neighborhood within Jefferson Park, has its own Metra stop.

Bars and restaurants here

Gale Street Inn, known for its ribs, has been in Jefferson Park since 1963. It closed in June 2025 and reopened that December at 4914 N. Milwaukee under a new owner who said he planned to bring back live jazz and blues. Over Labor Day weekend the Copernicus Center runs an indoor full bar and pours specialty Polish beers for Taste of Polonia.