Slot Machines for Bars in Morgan Park, Chicago

History

Morgan Park began on the Blue Island Ridge, a wooded highland. Thomas Morgan, an English settler, bought most of John Blackstone's land there in 1844, and the Rock Island Railroad ran its line through in 1852. After Morgan's heirs sold, the Blue Island Land and Building Company subdivided the land in 1869, and Thomas F. Nichols drew the curving streets, pocket parks and roundabouts that gave the village its English-town look. The company gave land to a military academy, a Baptist church and a women's college, then landed the Baptist Theological Union in 1877; William Rainey Harper, later the University of Chicago's first president, was on its faculty by 1879. Temperance shaped the village: when it incorporated in 1882, it barred liquor sales from Western Avenue east to Vincennes Avenue. The company's president donated a Romanesque library, finished in 1890. Black families organized Beth Eden Church in 1891, and French Catholic brickyard workers founded Sacred Heart near 117th Street in 1904. Chicago annexed the village in 1914 after a court fight. Between 1930 and 1960 new subdivisions more than doubled the population.

The area today

The older blocks still read as a planned village. Bohn Park, a small triangle beside the Rock Island depot that developers reserved in the years after the Civil War, got a plan from Jens Jensen. Metra's Rock Island line stops at the 111th Street station, one of six historic commuter stations the city designated a landmark district in 1995. Kennedy Park, on Western Avenue, has four baseball diamonds and a pool, on land the Calumet Park District began buying in 1911 at residents' urging. At 111th and Western, the Beverly Arts Center opened a performing arts complex in 2002, and redevelopment followed at the corner. The library from 1890 is now the Walker Branch, and its exterior walls are the oldest structure the Chicago Public Library owns.

Bars and restaurants here

Western Avenue is where the rooms cluster: pizza, tacos, a brewery and neighborhood taverns. Taverns, including a room licensed for music and dance, sit along Ashland Avenue and 115th Street. If you run a room on Western, your neighbors are kitchens and taverns side by side. Some establishments here have applied with the state for video gaming licenses.