Slot Machines for Bars in South Lawndale, Chicago

History

South Lawndale filled in after the Fire of 1871, when Germans and Czechs pushed west past Western Avenue. Czech families began arriving around 1880 and built the largest Czech settlement in the city, calling it Czech California after California Avenue; by 1910 they owned about four of every five dwellings here. Their main artery was 26th Street, and their parishes still stand, St. Ludmila at 24th and Albany and Blessed Agnes at 26th and Central Park. Anton Cermak, mayor until his death in 1933, lived on South Millard, and 22nd Street was renamed for him. Poles followed, and the work stayed close: International Harvester in the southeast quadrant, Western Electric along the western boundary, and Commonwealth Edison's Crawford station, raised in 1926 at 35th and Pulaski. In 1871 the city moved its Bridewell to 26th and California as the House of Corrections, the county built its jail alongside, and the criminal courthouse of 1929 still anchors the complex. From the late 1960s the big plants closed, and Mexican families remade 26th Street into Little Village, La Villita.

The area today

It runs roughly from Cermak Road south to the Stevenson Expressway, between Western Avenue and the city limits at Cicero. Marshall Square, in the northeast corner, is named for the boulevards that frame it, Marshall and 24th; the neon over Apollo's 2000 on Cermak marks the Marshall Square Theater of 1917. Piotrowski Park at 31st and Keeler, acquired in 1949 and renamed in 1974 for Lillian Piotrowski of the Cook County Board, holds the ball fields and summer pool. The arch at 26th and Albany, built in 1990 and a City landmark since 2022, opens the Little Village strip. The Pink Line, running since 2006, crosses the north end at Central Park, Pulaski, Kostner and Cicero. Crawford closed in 2012, its smokestack fell in April 2020 under a cloud of dust, and a Target distribution center opened there in 2021; the City has planned the canal-side industrial corridor since 2018.

Bars and restaurants here

On 26th Street you know the scene: a liquor moratorium passed in the 1990s stopped new taverns from opening here and in Pilsen. When Osito's Tap opened in 2019 behind Moreno's Liquors near 26th and Ridgeway, its owner told Block Club the rules had been relaxed about a year and a half earlier, and Block Club called it the first new Little Village bar in decades, built so neighbors could stay in the neighborhood for a drink. Cermak Road through Marshall Square sits in the shadow of the 26th Street strip.