Slot Machines for Bars in Lake View, Chicago

History

Settlers from Germany, Sweden and Luxembourg farmed Lake View first, and celery was the main crop. James Rees and Elisha Hundley built the Lake View House, a resort hotel on the lakeshore near today's Lake Shore Drive and Byron Street, to draw land buyers. The township organized in 1857, built a town hall at Halsted and Addison in 1872, incorporated as a city in 1887 and, after a contested vote, was annexed to Chicago in 1889.

The Redemptorist Fathers founded St. Alphonsus for the German parish in 1882 at the six-way corner of Southport, Lincoln and Wellington, and its parishioners built the Athenaeum Theatre next door in 1911. A ballpark opened at Clark and Addison in 1914 and became Wrigley Field, home of the Cubs since 1916. Wieboldt's anchored a shopping district at Lincoln, Belmont and Ashland from 1917, and factories on Diversey and the Lakewood Avenue rail line filled the southwest blocks with workers. Apartment buildings, then high-rises and four-plus-ones, brought single renters, and the blocks by Belmont Harbor had a gay population by the 1950s. East Lake View was New Town in the early 1970s; the 1980s real-estate rush put Wrigleyville on the map.

The area today

Lake View sits four miles north of the Loop, and the el sets its rhythm. At Belmont the Red, Brown and Purple lines meet, and since 2021 a flyover has carried the Brown Line over the other two; Southport is the Brown Line stop between Belmont and Addison. The Red Line's Addison station is a short walk from Wrigley Field, a Chicago Landmark since 2004. On Halsted, the twenty rainbow pylons the City dedicated in 1998 mark Northalsted, where Sidetrack fills for its monthly storytelling night. Along Southport Avenue are Schubas, a former Schlitz tied house at Belmont, and the Music Box Theatre, a 700-seat cinema from 1929. Broadway and Clark carry the Lakeview East shops, heirs of the old Clark and Diversey shopping district; Belmont Harbor holds the lakefront. Wrigleyville and Northalsted are its best-known parts.

Bars and restaurants here

Clark Street at Addison is the ballpark strip: rooftops, beer gardens and big screens that fill on a Cubs home date and empty out when the team travels, so the owners who last build a crowd for a Tuesday in February. Around Clark and Roscoe, the strip is coming back from the pandemic and the Red-Purple track construction that closed Johnny O'Hagan's and Redmond's Ale House, and the newcomers are kitchens first. Halsted north of Belmont is the Northalsted bar row under the pylons, anchored by Sidetrack. Southport has leaned toward restaurants lately; the Blue Bayou's 2024 return across from the Music Box put a New Orleans-themed bar back on the avenue.