Slot Machines for Bars in Logan Square, Chicago

History

New Yorker Martin Kimbell claimed 160 acres of open prairie here in 1836, when it lay beyond Chicago's borders. Farmers hauled produce along the North West Plank Road, later Milwaukee Avenue, and factories followed the Chicago & North Western tracks laid west of the river. Chicago annexed Holstein, a German factory district now called Bucktown, in 1863. After the 1871 fire, moderately priced frame houses went up because the area lay outside the fire limits. The city took in the remainder in 1889 and soon paved and planted the boulevards. German and Scandinavian families lined Logan, Kedzie and Humboldt Boulevards and the two squares with graystone flats and houses, and Norwegian-Americans built large churches, the most famous now the Minnekirken on Kedzie. Poles and Russian Jews arrived after World War I, and the population peaked at 114,174 in 1930. The Kennedy Expressway severed the industrial east edge in the late 1950s, and subway construction in the 1960s disrupted business in central Logan Square. Hispanic families arrived from 1960 on, and by 1990 they were almost two-thirds of residents. Neighbors formed the Logan Square Neighborhood Association in 1963.

The area today

Milwaukee Avenue cuts diagonally across the community. At the traffic circle where it meets Kedzie and Logan Boulevard, the Illinois Centennial Monument, built in 1918 for the state's 100th anniversary, stands in the green space. The City's two-year rebuild of that circle moved Kedzie to make La Placita, a plaza beside the Logan Square Blue Line station, a subway stop at 2620 N. Milwaukee. The Logan Square Chamber of Commerce organizes the neighborhood's Sunday farmers market. The boulevards' houses, churches and commercial buildings, mostly built between about 1880 and 1930, make up a Chicago Landmark district centered on Logan and Palmer Squares. Palmer Square, at 2200 N. Kedzie, has a running track, a playground themed on The Velveteen Rabbit and, since September 2025, a Level I arboretum accreditation.

Bars and restaurants here

Milwaukee Avenue carries the evening. In 2025 the Chamber of Commerce held a restaurant crawl along Milwaukee Avenue, with Logan Square stops that included a brewery and a taverna. Two Mexican restaurants with mezcal cocktail lists opened on Milwaukee that year, at 2700 and 2539 North. Block Club's 2026 patio guide lists back patios at O's Tap, a classic neighborhood bar, and Welcome Back Lounge, a dive bar with Monday night bingo and a back lawn. Beside the Blue Line station, La Placita more than doubled the space for outdoor restaurant seating when Kedzie was moved.