Video Gaming in Chicago's 31st Ward — bars, licensing, status

History

Belmont Cragin's first business was a saloon, opened by George Merrill at Armitage and Grand to serve the truck farmers hauling produce over the plank road to the city. The area stayed mostly rural until the 1880s, when the Cragin Brothers moved a tin and iron plant near that corner, and the railroads that served it drew in more factories and workers. Swedish, German and Irish workers were among the first to settle near the plants, and by 1920 the jobs had pulled in Poles and Italians as well.

Chicago annexed the area in 1889, the same year it took in Hermosa, where Scottish settlers had called the woods and prairie Kelvyn Grove. Hermosa's factories also sat along the rail lines, and when streetcar lines extended along North, Armitage and Fullerton avenues in 1907, growth sped up. By 1942, bungalows and two-flats predominated there. Belmont Cragin is nicknamed the bungalow belt for its housing. Between 1980 and 2000, Hispanic residents grew from 31 percent of Hermosa to 84 percent, more than half of them Puerto Rican and most of the rest Mexican.

The area today

Ald. Felix Cardona, Jr. represents the 31st Ward from a ward office at 4606 W. Diversey Ave. Cardona took office in 2019 after forcing the incumbent into a runoff and winning with about 54 percent of the vote, and went on to a second term. The ward is centered on Belmont Cragin and takes in parts of Hermosa, Avondale and Portage Park on the Northwest Side. Diversey and Fullerton avenues run through it, and Cicero Avenue crosses both. Kelvyn Park in Hermosa sits one block south of Diversey, midway between Cicero and Pulaski, and its 1928 fieldhouse holds a gymnasium, a fitness center and an auditorium. Belmont Cragin's own community website describes a Latinx neighborhood where long-time residents and new neighbors live side by side.

Bars and restaurants here

If your room is on Diversey or Fullerton, you are on one of Belmont Cragin's restaurant streets. The neighborhood's community website counts at least 50 locally owned restaurants spanning over a dozen nationalities, and its directory puts Peruvian, Salvadoran, Venezuelan, Cuban and Mexican kitchens along these two avenues, with Polish and Chinese places, pizzerias, bakeries and paleta shops mixed in. The same site calls the neighborhood a family-oriented place and points to busy commercial corridors set among the bungalow streets.