Slot Machines for Bars in South Deering, Chicago

History

Steel made South Deering. The Joseph H. Brown Iron and Steel Company opened beside the Calumet River in 1875, and the settlement of mill workers around it was called Irondale until community leaders renamed the area South Deering in 1903. International Harvester took over Brown's mill in 1902, and Wisconsin Steel supplied steel for its tractors and combines. A 1947 company anniversary booklet gave the works about 202 acres, slips and docks of its own, and about 5,000 employees. Gold Medal Flour and the Federal Furnace Company opened plants here too, and Irish workers founded St. Kevin's church at 105th and Torrence. In 1908 the South Park Commission started buying land for Trumbull Park, and in 1917 it chose Lyman Trumbull as the park's namesake, turning down residents' request for the name South Deering Park. The Chicago Housing Authority built Trumbull Park Homes in the 1930s. Harvester sold the mill to a subsidiary of Envirodyne in 1977, and Envirodyne closed it without notice in March 1980. Former mill workers formed the Save Our Jobs Committee, which sued to recover lost benefits.

The area today

South Deering sits on the west bank of the Calumet River, below 95th Street, and the river is still a working waterway, zoned for industry. Trumbull Park, about 18 acres, has two gymnasiums, a fitness center, a boxing center, four baseball diamonds and a stand of ginkgo trees in its central plaza; its fieldhouse dates to 1914, and the Park District lists after-school and summer day camp programs there. Nearby, the Housing Authority's Trumbull Park Homes still stands, built low, with two-story rowhouses beside three-story apartment buildings, and its units have been renovated.

Bars and restaurants here

If you run a room on Commercial Avenue, you know the stretch south of 95th Street: neighborhood taverns clustered in the 96th Street blocks, a not-for-profit club among them, and a few more near 100th Street. Torrence Avenue has a tavern license of its own, and out on Doty Avenue a golf center's bar and grille holds an outdoor patio license. The licenses on file only outline the scene, and the owners on each block know the rest. At least one establishment here has applied with the state for video gaming licenses.