Video Gaming in Chicago's 35th Ward — bars, licensing, status

History

Avondale began as prairie along an Indian trail that was straightened and planked as Milwaukee Avenue after 1848. Clay pits and brick factories clustered near Belmont Avenue in an area called Bricktown, and the brick was in demand after the fire of 1871. Chicago annexed Avondale in 1889, and streetcar lines on Milwaukee and Elston avenues and the Logan Square branch of the Elevated line drove heavy development from 1890 to 1920. By 1930, Poles made up 33 percent of the community's 48,000 residents.

In Logan Square, New Yorker Martin Kimbell claimed 160 acres of prairie in 1836, and Chicago annexed the remainder of the area in 1889. The "L" arrived the following year, and the city paved and planted the boulevards. The graystone flats and houses of upwardly mobile Scandinavians and Germans lined Logan, Kedzie and Humboldt boulevards. After World War I, Poles and Russian Jews arrived as earlier immigrants moved further out Milwaukee Avenue. By 1990, Hispanics made up almost two-thirds of the community's population.

The area today

Ald. Anthony Quezada represents the 35th Ward from a ward office at 2934 N. Milwaukee Ave., Unit C. The City Council confirmed Quezada to the seat on April 7, 2025, replacing former Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa. On March 12, 2026, the City Council's License and Consumer Protection Committee voted without debate to reject ordinances that would have banned video slot and poker machines in six wards, the 35th among them, WTTW News reported.

The ward takes in, roughly, Avondale and Logan Square, plus a slice of Irving Park. Blue Line trains stop at Logan Square, on Milwaukee Avenue, and at Belmont. Logan Square is known for its tree-lined boulevards and squares, Logan and Palmer squares among them.

Bars and restaurants here

Milwaukee Avenue is the spine. The Encyclopedia of Chicago calls it one of the city's main commercial thoroughfares, and it cuts diagonally through Logan Square. At the six-corner meeting of Milwaukee, Diversey and Kimball, seven commercial buildings built between 1922 and 1930 form a Chicago Landmark district and once housed Goldblatt's, Woolworth and Kresge. In Avondale, old taverns are finding new lives. A former dive bar on Milwaukee Avenue became an Italian-American restaurant, and on Belmont Avenue a Polish tavern that served factory workers, then sat dormant for more than two decades, has been reworked into a cocktail bar.