Video Gaming in Chicago's 36th Ward — bars, licensing, status

History

William Sayre claimed 90 acres in what is now Montclare in 1836, and farmers used Grand Avenue to reach the downtown markets. The town took its name from Montclair, New Jersey, and Chicago annexed it in 1889. The first spurt of growth came with the Grand Avenue streetcar extension in 1912. In Belmont Cragin, a saloon at Whiskey Point, the corner of Armitage and Grand, came first. Cragin Brothers & Company moved a tin plate and sheet iron plant nearby, and the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad built a station for its workers. Swedish, German and Irish workers came early, then Poles and Italians, and builders filled the blocks with bungalows, Cape Cods and two-flats. By the 2000 census the area was 65 percent Hispanic.

At the other end, German immigrants developed the blocks between Division, Damen, Chicago and Western after the fire of 1871. Ukrainians outnumbered other groups there after a wave of immigration from 1880 to 1910, and St. Nicholas Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral was built between November 1913 and January 1915. Across West Town, Puerto Ricans and Mexicans moved in during the second half of the twentieth century as Poles moved north.

The area today

Ald. Gilbert Villegas represents the 36th Ward from a ward office at 6560 W. Fullerton Ave. #C118 Suite A (Bricktown Square Shopping Center). Villegas won the April 2023 runoff with 58 percent of the vote, in a ward the Sun-Times called oddly drawn. It runs through parts of Belmont Cragin and Montclare on the Northwest Side, a slice of Humboldt Park, and parts of West Town, including Ukrainian Village. There, the churches, the Ukrainian Cultural Center and the Ukrainian National Museum remain, and Ukrainian-owned shops stand along Chicago and Western avenues.

Bars and restaurants here

On the Northwest Side, the restaurant strips run along Fullerton, Diversey, Belmont and Central avenues, though the ward takes only part of them. The neighborhood site counts more than 50 locally owned restaurants in Belmont Cragin spanning over a dozen nationalities: Mexican, Salvadoran, Peruvian, Cuban, Polish and Chinese kitchens, with bakeries and paleterias in between. Out east, Chicago Avenue is the corridor to know. Ukrainian shops have opened along it and Western Avenue over the years, and a more-than-century-old building at 2018 W. Chicago Ave. became a tasting-menu restaurant.