Slot Machines for Bars in South Loop, Chicago

History

The railroads entering Chicago set up shops and yards on the Near South Side in the 1850s, and after Dearborn Street Station opened at Polk and Dearborn in 1885 the blocks around it became the printing center of the Midwest, filled in by wholesale houses and warehouses pushed out of the Loop. Michigan Avenue between 14th and 22nd Streets went from grand houses to Auto Row within a few years of the turn of the century, lined with terra cotta showrooms. On lakefill the Illinois Central gave the City in 1911, the Field Museum opened in 1921, Soldier Field in 1924 and the Shedd Aquarium and Adler Planetarium in 1930.

Trains stopped at Dearborn Station in 1971. In 1977 downtown business leaders persuaded George Halas to release 51 acres of rail yards for Dearborn Park, whose apartments and townhouses became a model of urban renewal; a second phase began in 1988 and Central Station followed in 1990 on 72 acres of old yards east of Indiana Avenue. Printing houses became lofts from the late 1970s, the station reopened as a commercial center in the mid-1980s, and conversions spread to Wabash, Michigan and Indiana, residential streets again after a hundred years.

The area today

Columbia College Chicago, founded in 1890 as the Columbia School of Oratory, moved to 600 South Michigan Avenue in 1977, added a student center on Wabash in 2019, and treats the Harrison Red Line stop on State Street as its front door. Roosevelt is where the neighborhood changes trains: the Red Line subway under State dates from 1943, the Orange and Green Line platform above opened in 1993, the two were joined in 2002, and Metra stops three blocks east in Grant Park. Rerouting northbound Lake Shore Drive in 1998 tied the Field Museum, the Shedd, the Adler and Soldier Field into one Museum Campus; the stadium was renovated in 2002 and 2003, and the old Meigs Field site on Northerly Island became a park in 2015. Michigan Avenue from 11th Street north is a landmark district, the one-sided streetwall facing Grant Park.

Bars and restaurants here

The night here runs on two strips. On Wabash south of Roosevelt and on Michigan down past 16th Street, the rooms are lounges, sushi bars, Italian cafes and sports bars in storefronts; the crowd walks over from Dearborn Park and Central Station, and on Bears Sundays the sports bars within a short walk of Soldier Field fill before kickoff. Regulars hold on: a lounge that had been a Wabash fixture for twenty years closed, and the room reopened under a new name within a year. North of Roosevelt, the loft blocks around Dearborn Station and Printers Row carry their own evening trade of bars and dining rooms, with Columbia students and Harrison Red Line riders in the mix.