Video Gaming in Chicago's 15th Ward — bars, licensing, status

History

The Union Stock Yard opened on Christmas Day, 1865, outside the city limits, and the neighborhoods around it were built by the people who worked there. Irish and German stockyard workers settled within walking distance of the plants. Managers imported Polish strikebreakers in the 1880s, which drew a wider wave of Eastern European immigrants to Back of the Yards. Chicago annexed the area in 1889, yet few streets were paved or sewered in the 1890s, and the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council was founded in the 1930s to press city officials for services. German farmers settled the Gage Park prairie in the 1840s, and by 1920 its 13,692 residents were mostly Bohemian and Polish stockyard employees. West Englewood grew up around railroad junctions, and the "L" reached Loomis Boulevard in 1907. All of New City's major packinghouses closed between 1952 and 1962, and the stockyards followed in 1971. Gage Park's Hispanic population grew from 39 percent in 1990 to 79 percent in 2000.

The area today

Ald. Raymond A. Lopez represents the 15th Ward from a ward office at 2650 W. 51st St. Lopez first won the seat in 2015 and won again in 2019 and 2023. The ward takes in parts of New City, often called Back of the Yards, along with Gage Park, West Englewood, Chicago Lawn and Brighton Park. Davis Square Park, one of ten South Park Commission parks that opened in 1905, has a classical fieldhouse from D.H. Burnham and Co., a boxing center and an outdoor pool. Gage Park, at Western Avenue and Garfield Boulevard, covers 25 acres with five ball diamonds and a fieldhouse holding a 1931 mural by Tom Lea. The Gage Park neighborhood is part of the city's historic bungalow belt. The ward's West Englewood stretch sits near Lindblom Technical High School, known for its imposing neoclassical front.

Bars and restaurants here

The City's liquor-license records put the ward's taverns and restaurants mainly on Western Avenue and on 47th, 51st and 59th Streets. Back of the Yards has a formal retail district at 47th and Ashland, a special service area since 1989. Its annual Fiesta Back of the Yards, held in June, draws 300,000 people over three days, the neighborhood council says. Along 47th Street, a decades-old diner that closes by mid-afternoon shares the blocks with a newer Mexican restaurant whose bar pours tequila and mezcal.