Slot Machines for Bars in Streeterville, Chicago

History

Early maps showed little but lake north of the river and east of Pine Street, now Michigan Avenue. Sand piled up north of a pier built at the river mouth in 1834, and the Sands drew squatters and a vice district until lakefront investors got Mayor "Long John" Wentworth to clear them out in 1857. On the Near North Side, William B. Ogden gave the Chicago Dock and Canal Company control of the land where North Pier was later built.

In 1886 George Wellington Streeter stranded his boat on the Sands, declared the land it had created outside Illinois, and called it the "Deestric of Lake Michigan." Eviction attempts turned into gun battles and a prison term, and a court threw out his claim in 1918, but the name stayed.

Municipal Pier was built at Grand Avenue between 1913 and 1916, three thousand feet long, with warehouse sheds, railroad tracks and a ballroom at its eastern end. It became Navy Pier in the 1920s. The Michigan Avenue Bridge opened in 1920 and fostered a luxury shopping district on North Michigan Avenue. Northwestern broke ground on Chicago Avenue in 1925 for buildings to house its medical, dental, law and business schools, among them the fourteen-story Montgomery Ward Building, and dedicated the campus in 1927.

The area today

Streeterville lies east of Michigan Avenue, and the John Hancock Center, now known by its address, 875 N. Michigan, and Water Tower Place stand on the ground Streeter fought over. Northwestern's Chicago campus sits on Chicago Avenue and partners with medical affiliates including Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Lurie Children's Hospital and the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab. At the east end of Grand Avenue, Navy Pier replaced its shipping facilities with a recreational and entertainment complex in 1994. Ohio Street Beach, a pocket beach that is a favorite among swimmers, sits off DuSable Lake Shore Drive near Jane Addams Memorial Park and Milton Lee Olive Park. The Olive park covers 10 acres on a manmade peninsula north of Navy Pier, part of the water filtration plant project completed in 1965, and the Lakefront Trail passes the beach and both parks. On the Red Line, the CTA sends pier-bound riders out at Grand for the eastbound 29 or 65 buses and at Chicago for the 66.

Bars and restaurants here

Grand Avenue leads east to Navy Pier, where a rooftop restaurant and bar looks out on the skyline and Lake Michigan. On the 94th floor of 875 N. Michigan, a bar shares the floor with the 360 Chicago observation deck, which draws scores of visitors every day. Over on Park Drive, a hotel's third-floor terrace hosts social hours, live music evenings, trivia nights and tailgates. Northwestern describes Streeterville as home to a restaurant, shopping and nightlife scene as well as educational and medical institutions, and in summer Ohio Street Beach adds swimmers and rentable kayaks, right near the pier and the Magnificent Mile.