Video Gaming in Chicago's 43rd Ward — bars, licensing, status

History

The 43rd Ward's lakefront began as Chicago's city cemetery, set aside in 1837; the graves proved such a health hazard that the cemetery was moved and the land became a park, renamed for the assassinated president. German truck farmers earned the area the nickname "Cabbage Patch," and by 1852 their community was established enough to begin building St. Michael's Church. Factories along the North Branch later drew Italian, Polish, Romanian, Hungarian and Slovak workers to the western blocks, while mansions fronted the park. St. Vincent's College opened in 1898 and became DePaul University in 1907.

After World War II, Old Town residents feared their blocks were sliding toward slum status and formed the Old Town Triangle Association in 1948. The Lincoln Park Conservation Association followed in 1954, and urban renewal through the 1960s rehabbed the old cottages, raised high-rises near the park, and drew protests that Puerto Rican and Black residents were being displaced. Wells Street boomed in the 1960s, drew hippies late in the decade, then came back as young professionals moved in. By century's end, land values had climbed so far that most of the area's poor had left.

The area today

Alderman Timmy Knudsen represents the 43rd Ward from a ward office at 2523 N. Halsted St. He was appointed to the seat after Michele Smith retired and won a full term in the April 2023 runoff with 52 percent of the vote. The ward takes in, roughly, Lincoln Park and Old Town along the North Side lakefront. The Red and Brown lines meet at Fullerton, and the Brown Line continues south to Armitage and Sedgwick. The park's zoo began with a donation of mute swans, and DePaul's campus sits by the Fullerton stop. Weeknights belong to DePaul students, young professionals from the high-rises and families from the side streets; weekends bring the zoo crowd, the lakefront and the comedy audience headed to Second City on Wells.

Bars and restaurants here

If your room is on Halsted or Armitage near the Brown Line, you know the mix: neighborhood taverns with a DePaul crowd on weeknights, date-night dining rooms, and patios that fill the minute the weather turns. The stretch of Lincoln Avenue north of Fullerton runs later and louder, sports bars and late kitchens drawing a younger crowd off the el. Clark Street is the everyday strip, brunch spots and corner bars that pull from the high-rises to the east. Wells Street in Old Town is a different room altogether: comedy-night crowds out of Second City, cocktail lounges, steakhouses and taverns that trade on the strip's old bohemian reputation.