Slot Machines for Bars in Ohare, Chicago

History

In 1829 the Treaty of Prairie du Chien set aside two square miles along the Des Plaines River for Alexander Robinson, an interpreter of Scottish and Ottawa descent who had helped whites escape the Fort Dearborn Massacre. A few families settled along what became Higgins Road in the early 1840s, and German immigrants founded a church and St. Johannes Cemetery in 1849. Orchard Place took its name from the depot the Wisconsin Central Railroad opened there in 1887.

Douglas Aircraft took over Orchard Place in 1942 to build cargo planes, and in 1947 the City Council chose the site for a new international airport. Chicago annexed the airport in March 1956 with a narrow strip of Higgins Road to connect it to the city, added forest preserve land in 1958, and in 1961 exchanged Higgins for a wider stretch of Foster Avenue. Mayor Daley and President Kennedy dedicated the finished airport on March 23, 1963, naming it for World War II hero Lt. Comdr. Edward O'Hare. The Blue Line arrived on September 3, 1984. High-rise apartments made part of the area residential in the 1960s, and many homes went to airport and airline employees.

The area today

Nearly 14,000 people live in this corner of the city, 14 miles northwest of the Loop, and the Sun-Times and WBEZ reported in 2025 that about 60 percent of them were born abroad. Ukrainian, Polish and other Eastern European immigrants have arrived in large numbers, and Slavic languages are the most spoken. Ald. Anthony Napolitano told the paper the area has long been called Cumberland, after its main street. St. Joseph the Betrothed Ukrainian Catholic Church, with its gold dome, stands on North Cumberland Avenue, and the ranch homes of Schorsch Forest View, built by the Schorsch Brothers in the 1950s, run along it between Lawrence and Montrose. Dirksen Elementary on West Foster Avenue has more than 40 languages and cultures among its students. Pilots, flight attendants, police officers and firefighters have long lived here, residents said, and the Blue Line ends at the airport's O'Hare station.

Bars and restaurants here

Inside the airport, The Hampton Social and Bar Siena opened in the expanded Terminal 5 in 2024, and The Dearborn, a tavern that opened in the Loop in 2016, added a Terminal 5 location in 2025. Away from the runways, the 2025 Sun-Times and WBEZ story quoted one resident who shops in Harwood Heights, eats in Park Ridge and goes out in Rosemont. Sun-Times photos from May 2025 show a Jewel-Osco and Sicilian Bakery on North Cumberland Avenue and a row of shops near the Lawrence Avenue corner.