Slot Machines for Bars in Rogers Park, Chicago

History

Phillip Rogers, an Irish immigrant, bought up roughly 1,600 acres of government land between the late 1830s and his death in 1856. His son-in-law Patrick Touhy subdivided land near Lunt and Ridge in 1872; the Village of Rogers Park incorporated in 1878, its investors naming Pratt, Farwell, Morse, Lunt and Greenleaf after themselves. Railroads had reached it in the 1860s; voters approved annexation to Chicago in 1893.

The streetscape came with the "L". The Howard station opened in 1908, the population jumped, and subdividers switched from houses to apartments, densest north of Howard and along the tracks; Rogers Park has been mostly a renter neighborhood ever since. The Jesuits bought lakefront land at Devon in 1906 for Loyola University, and the 1915 annexation of Germania, north of Howard, gave the city a new northern boundary. Four movie palaces, the Howard, Adelphi, Granada and Norshore, anchored the shopping streets until the movie business changed. Irish, German and Luxembourger families came first, Russian and Eastern European immigrants by the late 1960s, then newcomers from Asia and the Americas and a growing African American population in the 1970s.

The area today

Nine miles north of the Loop, Rogers Park remains one of the city's most diverse neighborhoods, with arrivals from Latin America, South and Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe and Africa. The Red Line embankment is the spine of the east side, with stops at Jarvis, Morse, Loyola and Howard; Morse was named Rogers Park until about 1940, and since 2007 the Mile of Murals has been painting its walls along Glenwood between Estes and Pratt. Loyola University and its Art Deco Madonna della Strada Chapel hold the lakefront at Devon; Loyola Park, more than 40 acres of beach and fieldhouse, runs north from the campus and hosts the Artists of the Wall festival each Father's Day weekend. Block Club reported in November 2025 that Glenwood between Morse and Lunt would keep closing on summer weekends for the Glenwood Sunday Market, a farmers market; Clark Street is the taqueria strip, where Block Club covered the Rogers Park Taco Crawl in 2024.

Bars and restaurants here

Glenwood between Morse and Lunt sits under the murals and the train. Le Piano, the jazz bar at 6970 N. Glenwood, said in November 2025 that it would stay open after the death of its co-owner, and Glenwood Martini Bar opened at 6958 N. Glenwood in March 2025, with go-go dancers and drag performers planned for Friday through Sunday. The alfresco setup that closed the block to cars for three-plus years came down at the end of 2025. Jarvis Square, at its own Red Line stop, had its expanded outdoor dining renewed for two more years.