Slot Machines for Bars in Mount Greenwood, Chicago

History

Dutch and German truck farmers were working the land here by the Civil War. In 1879 George Waite plotted a burial ground near 111th Street and Sacramento Avenue, and the name Mount Greenwood came with it. Other burial grounds followed, and the district earned the nickname Seven Holy Tombs. Funerals lasted all day, so restaurants and saloons sprang up along 111th Street for the mourners, and crowds from the nearby Worth Race Track joined them. In the early 1900s temperance crusaders pushed to close the saloons, and in 1907 opponents incorporated Mount Greenwood as a village to keep it wet. By 1926 a growing commercial strip ran along 111th from Sacramento to Kedzie. Mount Greenwood joined Chicago in 1927, hoping for sewers and paved streets that the WPA did not lay until 1936. Then 4,000 homes went up between 1945 and 1953. The Board of Education had bought a farm at 111th and Pulaski in 1846; it was the last farm inside the city limits, and an agricultural high school was created there in 1985.

The area today

Mount Greenwood lies in Chicago's far southwestern corner, hemmed in by cemeteries and by Oak Lawn, Alsip, Evergreen Park and Merrionette Park. Mostly single-family houses, small shops and plenty of open ground give it a roomy feel. Mount Greenwood Park, at 3721 W. 111th, grew from a 24-acre site the Park District bought from the Board of Education in 1948 and now has eleven ball fields, an ice rink, a pool and an accessible Miracle Field. The Chicago Public Library's Mount Greenwood branch, at 11010 S. Kedzie, was dedicated in 1991. St. Christina parish marked its 100th anniversary in 2026. Saint Xavier University, at 3700 W. 103rd, and a cluster of Catholic high schools sit along Central Park Avenue.

Bars and restaurants here

If you run a room on 111th Street, you work a strip that began by serving funeral crowds. Neighborhood taverns, several with patios, line it from Sacramento Avenue past Kedzie and the park toward Pulaski Road, mixed in with restaurants serving Mexican food, pizza and burgers. Club halls run by not-for-profit groups add to the mix, and at least one room is licensed as a public place of amusement. A couple of rooms sit farther north on Pulaski Road, and one tavern stands on Spaulding Avenue just off 111th. Some establishments here have applied with the state for video gaming licenses.