Video Gaming in Chicago's 1st Ward — bars, licensing, status

History

Most of the ground east of Wood Street sat inside Chicago's original 1837 city limits, and in the late 1840s workers came to build railroad lines. In 1870 the developers Charles and Joel Wicker donated four acres for a park, and the fashionable neighborhood that grew around it took the park's name. Brewery owners built residences on Hoyne, which became known as "Beer Baron Row," and German and Scandinavian residents were followed by Polish immigrants. Poles also settled around Division and Ashland, later called "Polish Downtown." Ukrainians settled between Chicago and Division, Damen and Western, where the developer William D. Kerfoot was behind nearly one of every three buildings in a district designated a Chicago Landmark in 2002.

Farther northwest, Logan Square was open prairie beyond the city line in 1836. Chicago annexed the rest of it in 1889, the "L" arrived the next year, and graystone flats rose along the boulevards around Logan and Palmer Squares. The Bloomingdale rail line was raised onto an embankment between 1910 and 1913. In the second half of the twentieth century, West Town became a Latino "port of entry," first for Puerto Ricans and then Mexicans, and Wicker Park drew musicians and artists.

The area today

Ald. Daniel La Spata represents the 1st Ward from a ward office at 1958 N. Milwaukee Ave. La Spata, then a Logan Square Neighborhood Association organizer, unseated incumbent Ald. Proco "Joe" Moreno in February 2019 and won a second term in 2023 with 50.1 percent of the vote. Under the redrawn map, the ward takes in parts of West Town and Logan Square, roughly Wicker Park, Noble Square, East Village and the north end of Ukrainian Village, then reaches northwest to Palmer Square. The Blue Line, which the CTA runs around the clock, stops at Division, Damen and California. The 606's Bloomingdale Trail crosses the ward's narrow middle, Wicker Park hosts concerts and Movies in the Park, and Palmer Square has a running track around its green.

Bars and restaurants here

If your room is around Damen, North and Milwaukee, you work the old center of the Wicker Park business district, where restaurants and entertainment now sit beside shops. Division Street between Ashland and Western was dense with polka clubs and Polish bars in the 1940s, and its storefronts still change hands, with a dive bar announced in late 2025 for a former restaurant space near Damen. Up in Logan Square, Milwaukee Avenue near Fullerton is a strip of restaurants and cafes that the neighborhood chamber of commerce has promoted with a crawl.