Slot Machines for Bars in Near South Side, Chicago

History

Germans, Irish and Scandinavians off the Illinois and Michigan Canal settled first, working the lumber district along the South Branch, and railroads put shops and yards here in the 1850s. Prairie Avenue became the city's most fashionable street, home to the Armours, Fields, Kimballs and Pullmans, and the Glessner House of 1886, by H. H. Richardson, still stands in the 1800 block. The rich left for the Near North Side and Kenwood in the 1890s, and Michigan Avenue from 14th to 22nd became an auto row of terra cotta showrooms: Locomobile in 1903, Ford at 1444 S. Michigan in 1905. After the dealers left for the suburbs the strip became Record Row, and Chess Records cut Muddy Waters and Chuck Berry at 2120 S. Michigan. The Levee vice district around Cermak and State closed in 1912, and west of State the Black Belt's worst blocks were cleared after the war for public housing. Landfill in the 1920s and 1930s made Burnham Park and Northerly Island for the museums and Soldier Field, and the first McCormick Place opened at 23rd Street in 1960, burned in 1967 and was rebuilt larger. From 1988, Dearborn Park's second phase and then Central Station turned dead rail yards south of Roosevelt into new neighborhoods.

The area today

The north end reads as the South Loop, where loft conversions spread from Printers Row down Wabash, Michigan and Indiana and made them residential streets again. South of 18th the Prairie Avenue District keeps the Glessner and Clarke houses. The lakefront is the Museum Campus, one run of parkland from the Field Museum to Lakeside Center since Lake Shore Drive was rerouted in 1998, and Soldier Field, renovated in 2003, hosts the Bears, the Fire and about 194 events a year. McCormick Place, North America's largest convention center, spreads west across the Drive, with the Hyatt Regency and, since 2017, the Marriott Marquis and the 10,000-seat Wintrust Arena. The Cermak-McCormick Place Green Line station, opened in 2015 at Cermak and State, puts the halls and Motor Row a short walk from the platform, and a 2022 City streetscape cut Michigan from Cermak to 24th Place to three lanes with wider sidewalks.

Bars and restaurants here

If your room is on Michigan or Wabash south of Roosevelt, weeknights come down from the lofts and Central Station, and the calendar is set by the lakefront: Bears Sundays and Fire matches at Soldier Field, arena nights at Wintrust, and convention weeks when badge-wearing crowds walk out of McCormick Place and its hotels looking for dinner. Motor Row, the 2200 to 2500 blocks of Michigan, is where old showrooms have become taprooms, event rooms and restaurants, with blues some nights in a room that once sold cars. The Green Line platform at Cermak and State brings the rest of the city to the door.