Slot Machines for Bars in Sauganash, Chicago

History

The Encyclopedia of Chicago says the federal government ceded the Potawatomi chief Billy Caldwell, whose name Sauganash meant Englishman, a tract here in recognition of his help mediating treaties, and that the preserve covered nearly two and a half square miles shared by Sauganash and Edgebrook. A neighborhood history says the grant's diagonal shape along the river explains the street pattern. A Swedish immigrant, Charles Johnson, bought part of the land in 1840 and kept a farmstead near Peterson and Cicero avenues into the early 1950s. In 1912 the real estate firm Koester and Zander bought a small piece of the reserve and, with the Chicago Historical Society's support, chose the name Sauganash. Street work and utilities began in 1919, the first eight houses went up on Kostner Avenue in 1923 and 1924, and a hundred homes were occupied by 1928. Residents petitioned for a park board in 1926, and in late 1928 the park district bought nearly four acres from the developer. Queen of All Saints parish was created in 1929.

The area today

Sauganash is on the National Register of Historic Places as a historic district, and the Encyclopedia of Chicago described the housing here as palatial. The neighborhood's own design guide catalogs styles from Tudor Revival and Georgian to Cape Cod and Spanish Revival. Sauganash Park, on Kostner Avenue, has a fieldhouse with a gymnasium, two softball fields, tennis courts and a playground. Along its eastern edge runs the Valley Line Trail, also called the Sauganash Trail, on a former rail corridor; the Chicago stretch opened in the summer of 2008. Queen of All Saints Basilica, a Gothic church at 6280 N. Sauganash Avenue, became a basilica in 1962 and faces eight acres of lawn. Trains on Metra's Milwaukee District North line call at the Forest Glen and Edgebrook stations.

Bars and restaurants here

The Encyclopedia of Chicago describes the Forest Glen community area as overwhelmingly residential, with its shops clustered near Cicero, Devon and Lehigh.