Slot Machines for Bars in Ravenswood, Chicago

History

In 1868 a group of real-estate speculators called the Ravenswood Land Company bought 194 acres of farm and wooded land eight miles north of Chicago, in Lake View Township. They cut it into large lots for wealthy commuters and struck a deal with the Chicago & North Western Railroad to open a stop. The company's members included Luther Greenleaf, Cyrus Leland, John Wilson and John Kedzie, whose names survive on a couple of streets. It built the Sunnyside Hotel to draw prospective buyers but laid no sewers or sidewalks, and residents later recalled open ditches and muddy streets beside the lawns. Sewers came after Lake View and Jefferson townships were annexed to Chicago in 1889.

Factories followed the tracks. Residents led by Robert Bennett complained about a musical instrument factory at Ashland and Sunnyside, and in 1880 it moved across the railroad to Wolcott Avenue. The physician and pharmacist Wallace Abbott founded Abbott Laboratories in Ravenswood in 1888, and the J.C. Deagan company made marimbas and chimes in what is still called the Deagan Building on Berteau Avenue. When manufacturers left in the second half of the twentieth century, cheap rents in the big buildings drew artists and start-ups.

The area today

The Greater Ravenswood Chamber of Commerce says the industrial buildings along the Metra tracks on Ravenswood Avenue hold metalworkers, commercial bakeries and artist studios, and calls the corridor one of the few manufacturing districts left on the North Side, where people make motors, transformers, truck locks and hinges, clothes, snacks and beer. The Ravenswood Sculpture Garden, established in 2021, spreads public art along the street, and the annual ArtWalk is billed as a tour of arts and industry. Montrose Avenue crosses the corridor as a commercial district of cafes, taverns, restaurants, murals and sidewalk patios. The Brown Line and Metra's UP North line both serve the neighborhood, and since 2017 the chamber has branded the corridor's breweries and distillery as Malt Row.

Bars and restaurants here

On the industrial corridor the rooms are taprooms and brewpubs. Cultivate by Forbidden Root, at 4710 N. Ravenswood, opened in 2021 in the former Band of Bohemia space and cooks on a wood-fired hearth. On Montrose, a September 2025 chamber guide describes Wolcott Tap, at 1834 W. Montrose, as a pub with local drafts, a short walk from the Brown Line stop.