Slot Machines for Bars in Norwood Park, Chicago

History

The Noble family built a frame house here in 1833, now called the Noble-Seymour-Crippen House, which the City's landmark record says is believed to be the oldest house still standing in Chicago. English farmers settled in the 1830s, and Germans became the major ethnic group, along with many Poles and Scandinavians. The Illinois and Wisconsin Railroad, later part of the Chicago and North Western, ran a line to the area in 1853. In 1868 the Norwood Land and Building Association created a curving subdivision, and one of its historic streets, the Circle, is an oval. Construction began on a hotel and an artificial lake, in hopes of drawing Chicagoans looking for a resort. The hotel never drew enough customers, and a Norwegian old people's home went up on its site in 1896. The village incorporated in 1874 and, the Encyclopedia notes, banned the sale of liquor at the time. It took its name from Henry Ward Beecher's novel Norwood, with Park added because another Illinois post office already held the name. Voters chose annexation to Chicago in 1893. Road improvements on Milwaukee, Northwest Highway, Foster, Devon and Harlem in the 1920s brought newcomers, and in the 1950s the Kennedy Expressway was routed around the houses on the Circle.

The area today

Housing in this mostly residential community, 11 miles northwest of the Loop, runs from Victorian houses to bungalows, ranches and Cape Cods, and most of it is single-family. The Metra depot at 6088 N. Northwest Highway, on the Union Pacific Northwest Line, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2001. In Norwood Park, the CTA Blue Line's Harlem stop is at 5550 N. Harlem Avenue. The community's namesake park, at 5801 N. Natoma Avenue, has a fieldhouse, ball diamonds and an outdoor pool with a water slide. The Norwood Park Historical Society, which owns the Noble house and keeps exhibit rooms there, lists six neighborhood names, among them Old Norwood, Big Oaks, Oriole Park and Union Ridge, though none are official.

Bars and restaurants here

Downtown Norwood Park centers on Northwest Highway and Raven Street, where a local shopping district had formed by 1930. Retail and service businesses line the highway. Zia's Social fully opened at 6158 N. Northwest Highway in November 2021, in the old Iron Horse Ale House space, with high tops and booths, two stages for live music and a wood-fired pizza oven. Block Club's 2026 patio guide lists Zia's for pizza and a turf-lined patio. Higgins Road, Harlem Avenue and Milwaukee Avenue carry more retail and commercial activity, and on Milwaukee, Superdawg opened at 6363 in 1948.