Video Gaming in Chicago's 40th Ward — bars, licensing, status

History

Farms came first. In 1836 the Swiss immigrant Conrad Sulzer bought land in what became Lincoln Square, and truck farmers, mostly of German and English descent, followed and hauled produce down the old Little Fort Road, now Lincoln Avenue. The traffic on that road encouraged taverns to open for travelers. Rosehill Cemetery opened in 1859 around the site of Hiram Roe's tavern.

North of there, German and Luxembourger farmers settled West Ridge in the 1830s and 1840s, and it stayed relatively rural through most of the nineteenth century. It became part of Chicago in 1893. The real-estate boom after World War I made brick bungalows and two-flats its dominant housing, and its population swelled from about 7,500 in 1920 to almost 40,000 by 1930.

On the east side, Swedes gathered along Clark Street in what they called Andersonville, a community the Swedish American Museum traces to the years after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Merchants revived the Swedish past in the 1960s, and later shopkeepers from other ethnic groups added to it. By the late 1980s, gay and lesbian residents were settling there for cheaper homes and apartments north of Boys Town.

The area today

Ald. Andre Vasquez, Jr. represents the 40th Ward from a ward office at 5620 N. Western Ave. Vasquez won a runoff in 2019 to succeed Ald. Pat O'Connor, who had represented the ward for 36 years. The ward takes in, roughly, parts of Lincoln Square and West Ridge, plus the slice of Edgewater that holds Andersonville. Lincoln, Western and Foster avenues cross it, Rosehill Cemetery sits inside it, and Clark Street, Andersonville's main street, runs along its eastern edge. CTA's No. 22 Clark bus runs between Howard Street and Clark and Harrison, and the No. 92 Foster bus links the Blue Line at Jefferson Park with the Red Line at Berwyn. The Andersonville Chamber of Commerce organizes events that bring businesses and the community together, among them Midsommarfest, the Wine Walk and Taste of Andersonville.

Bars and restaurants here

If your room is on Clark Street between Foster and Bryn Mawr, you work Andersonville's main strip, which Block Club Chicago describes as still bustling with customers and mom-and-pop shops, even as the spread of chain stores worries some neighbors and business owners. A few holdovers from the Swedish years remain among shops and restaurants run by merchants from other ethnic groups. Simon's Tavern, at 5210 N. Clark, started as a basement speakeasy in the last years of Prohibition and became a licensed bar in May 1934. The chamber calls the district home to one of Chicago's largest LGBTQ+ populations.