Slot Machines for Bars in Near West Side, Chicago

History

The Near West Side runs from the South Branch of the river west to the old Pennsylvania Railroad tracks, between the North Western rail line and 16th Street. Its wealthy families settled around Union Park, created in 1854 as an elite refuge from the city. Irish immigrants built wooden cottages west of the river after 1837, and Germans, Czechs and French followed. The fire of October 1871 started in the O'Leary barn on DeKoven Street; St. Ignatius College on Roosevelt Road, opened in 1870, remains among the city's oldest buildings. By the end of the century Jews from Russia and Poland and Italians had replaced them: Italians between Polk and Taylor, Jews south toward 16th around the Maxwell Street Market at Halsted and Maxwell, Greeks in the Delta south of Harrison. In 1889 Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr opened Hull House in the Charles Hull mansion at 800 South Halsted. Cook County Hospital, completed in 1876, drew the medical schools the state organized into a Medical Center District in 1941. The University of Illinois at Chicago Circle opened in February 1965 on a hundred-acre site at the seam of the Greek and Italian neighborhoods, taking most of the Hull House complex with it.

The area today

Several districts here carry their own names: the West Loop and Fulton Market to the northeast, Greektown on Halsted north of the Eisenhower, and Little Italy on Taylor Street. West of Ashland the Illinois Medical District, renamed in 1995, holds Rush, Stroger, UI Health and the Jesse Brown VA; the old Cook County Hospital, closed in 2002, is now a Hyatt Place hotel. UIC's South Campus put housing and storefronts back on Maxwell Street in the 2000s, and the 1888 police station from Hill Street Blues now houses the campus police. The United Center anchors Madison, where ground broke in June 2026 on the 1901 Project, starting with a music venue, a hotel and parking garage on the arena's lots. The Blue Line stops at UIC-Halsted, Racine and Illinois Medical District, the Pink Line's Polk stop serves the hospitals, and Green and Pink share the Ashland stop at Lake.

Bars and restaurants here

If your room is on Madison between Ashland and Damen, the United Center sets your calendar: the strip turned around after the arena opened in 1994, and the bars and restaurants that filled in since run on game and concert nights, early arrivals and the post-game return. Near campus, Halsted and Roosevelt carry student traffic, and the Maxwell Street Market's return in 2024 put a Sunday crowd back on the block. Randolph, Fulton and Taylor streets each run their own rhythm.