Video Gaming in Chicago's 32nd Ward — bars, licensing, status

History

Bucktown was known as Holstein for its German factory workers when Chicago annexed the land east of Western Avenue and south of Fullerton in 1863. The Encyclopedia of Chicago calls it a primarily Polish working-class area of small homes, saloons and churches, and says the name supposedly comes from goats that roamed the streets at the turn of the twentieth century. Bucktown has become a haven for artists and has gentrified significantly.

Brickyards and clay pits along the North Branch of the Chicago River gave North Center the nickname Bricktown. Italians, Poles, Romanians, Hungarians and Slovaks who worked the factories along the river set the working-class character of west Lincoln Park. Lake View stood apart from Chicago as its own township from 1857 until it annexed to the city in 1889. Riverview Park, at Belmont and Western, closed after the 1967 season.

The area today

Ald. Scott Waguespack represents the 32nd Ward from a ward office at 2657 N. Clybourn Ave. Waguespack was first elected in a close runoff in 2007 and won a fifth term in 2023 without an opponent. Under the map approved in 2022, the ward takes in all of Bucktown and parts of Roscoe Village, Lakeview and Lincoln Park, along with the Lincoln Yards development site on the Chicago River. The ward office's website adds Wicker Park to that list and points to the Bloomingdale Trail, an elevated 2.7-mile path. CTA buses run along Damen (No. 50), Ashland (No. 9), Belmont (No. 77), Diversey (No. 76) and Western (No. 49).

Bars and restaurants here

On Damen Avenue, Block Club describes a commercial stretch between Armitage Avenue and the Kennedy Expressway. A tavern on Armitage near Damen opened in 1951 and, the same newsroom reported, operated for decades as the area shifted and gentrified. Roscoe Street is Roscoe Village's main business avenue, with locally owned restaurants and shops. The chamber of commerce's community survey also names Belmont Avenue and Lincoln Avenue from Diversey to Belmont among its business districts, and the ward holds stretches of both. The chamber says about half the businesses that opened along Belmont, Roscoe and Western to serve Riverview's visitors were bars and taverns.