Slot Machines for Bars in North Park, Chicago

History

A village was platted here in 1855, and German and Swedish farmers grew vegetables along the south bank of the North Branch of the Chicago River. Pehr Samuel Peterson, a nurseryman who came to Chicago in 1854, set up a tree nursery on land that later held the city's tuberculosis sanitarium. Czech families moved into the northwest corner once the Bohemian National Cemetery opened in 1877, then began leaving around 1900. The college that gave the neighborhood its name arrived in 1894, when a school begun in 1891 in a Minneapolis church basement moved to a riverside site then just beyond the city limits. The land around it was subdivided for homes, and streets, sewers and board sidewalks followed. Growth stayed slow, and the 1910 population was only 478. Between 1920 and 1930 it tripled, as prairie and woods filled with bungalows and two-flats. A small industrial district took shape along Peterson Avenue in the 1930s. The sanitarium at Pulaski and Bryn Mawr closed in 1974, and its grounds became senior housing and a nature center.

The area today

North Park University has its riverfront campus on Foster Avenue, and Northeastern Illinois University and Von Steuben magnet high school draw students from across the city, according to the Encyclopedia of Chicago, which adds that faculty, staff and students often live nearby, as do employees of Swedish Covenant Hospital. The same entry places the community about 9 miles northwest of the Loop, with two streams that it credits with an unusual ambience and Chicago's only waterfall, about four feet high, where the North Branch drops into the North Shore Channel. The North Park Village Nature Center runs trails through woodland, wetland, prairie and savanna, and the Bohemian National Cemetery draws visitors for its entrance gates and grave markers. Choose Chicago calls the neighborhood a blend of cultures and generations, with traces of its Swedish roots still around.

Bars and restaurants here

Foster Avenue beside the riverfront campus is where Choose Chicago's neighborhood guide finds international restaurants, with specialties from Vietnam, India, the Philippines, Mexico, Korea and the Middle East. Bryn Mawr Avenue has a business corridor of its own. Block Club Chicago reported in April 2025 that Chez Adele, serving West African dishes and smash burgers, had been open at 3311 W. Bryn Mawr since December.