Slot Machines for Bars in West Englewood, Chicago

History

Settlers came to this swampy oak savanna in the late 1840s, mostly German and Swedish farmers. The railroads brought the next wave of residents. The Michigan Southern & Northern Indiana line began service in February 1852, the Rock Island and Wabash laid track by the end of the decade, and the stop and its switch tracks were called Chicago Junction, later Junction Grove. Irish and German rail and stockyard workers lived near what is now 63rd Street, then Junction Avenue. Annexation to Chicago came in 1889, streetcars connected the neighborhood to downtown by 1896, and the Englewood "L" reached Loomis Boulevard in 1907.

Residents petitioned the school board in 1913 for a high school, and Robert Lindblom Technical High School opened in 1919. Its namesake was a Swedish-American grain trader, and the name reflected the neighborhood's Swedish roots. Italian immigrants arrived after World War I, and a transit bus barn at 74th and Ashland grew into a major employer. In the 1970s the barn closed, and jobs at the stockyards and on the railroads were lost.

The area today

The Green Line's Ashland/63rd station, at 6315 S. Ashland, sits at the south end of the line's Ashland branch. It opened in 1969, and five CTA bus routes connect there. Lindblom Math & Science Academy, at 6130 S. Wolcott, fills a full city block behind a limestone portico of Ionic columns. The school reopened as a citywide selective-enrollment high school in 2005. Lindblom Park began as 17 acres the Park District acquired in 1949, and floodlights went up around its basketball courts in the 1990s for night games. Murray Park, established in 1929, stands on land the City bought in 1917 for a water tunnel. The Chicago Public Library's West Englewood branch opened in 2003, and in 2006 the City drew a redevelopment district at the Ashland terminus, aimed at retail along Ashland, 59th and 63rd.

Bars and restaurants here

The taverns on record here sit on Racine Avenue, not on 63rd Street or Ashland Avenue, where the community's retail strip once ran along 63rd and down Ashland to 75th. If you run one on Racine, you work outside the Ashland and 63rd corridor.