Video Gaming in Chicago's 10th Ward — bars, licensing, status

History

South Chicago grew at the mouth of the Calumet River, where speculators began buying land in 1833 and Irish Catholics founded St. Patrick's parish in 1857. After the Great Fire of 1871, industry moved south. The Brown Iron and Steel Company opened on the Calumet in 1875, South Works followed in 1880, and a business district formed around Commercial Avenue and 92nd Street to serve the workers. West of the river, the mill settlement of Irondale took the name South Deering in 1903, and Irish workers founded St. Kevin's at 105th and Torrence. The East Side, once called Taylorville, Goosetown and Colehour, filled with German, Swedish, Croatian, Slovene, Serbian and Italian families. To the south, Adolph Hegewisch laid out a town along a rail line in 1883, though the canals meant to draw factories there were never built. South Chicago and Hegewisch were annexed in 1889. Mexicans were first hired as strikebreakers in the 1919 steel strike. Then the mills closed: Wisconsin Steel shut without notice in March 1980, LTV declared bankruptcy in 1986, and USX closed South Works in April 1992.

The area today

Ald. Peter Chico represents the 10th Ward from a ward office at 10500 S. Ewing Ave. Chico, then a Chicago police officer, won the April 2023 runoff to succeed the retiring Susan Sadlowski Garza. The ward sits near the Indiana border and takes in the East Side and Hegewisch, plus parts of South Chicago, South Deering and Riverdale. Metra Electric stops at 93rd Street and Baltimore Avenue, and the South Shore Line stops in Hegewisch on Brainard Avenue. Calumet Park covers about 182 acres of East Side lakefront, with a beach and a boat launch. At 87th Street and the lake, Steelworkers Park keeps South Works' concrete ore walls, one of them now a community climbing wall. A plaque at 117th Street and Avenue O remembers the ten strikers killed on Memorial Day 1937.

Bars and restaurants here

Commercial Avenue is South Chicago's main business strip, running roughly from 83rd to 93rd streets, and most of it lies inside the ward. It grew up serving steelworkers with locally owned restaurants and small shops, and the Metra stop at 93rd and Baltimore sits close by. On the East Side, the Nest Fest block party, with local bands and artists, was held outside a pub on 106th Street in August 2021. Hegewisch centers its business district on Baltimore and Brandon avenues. Each summer, Calumet Park's beach season runs from the Friday before Memorial weekend to Labor Day, with food concessions at the beach.