Video Gaming in Chicago's 46th Ward — bars, licensing, status

History

Uptown was thinly settled in the 1800s. Graceland Cemetery opened in what is now Uptown's southwest quarter, German and Swedish immigrants ran scattered farms, and roadhouse taverns along Clark Street served travelers and funeral parties. Chicago annexed the area, then part of Lake View Township, in 1889. The Northwestern Elevated began running trains to Wilson Avenue in 1900, and the neighborhood's center shifted east toward the tracks. Evanston Avenue became Broadway, a name business owners there had suggested, and a business association promoted the district as Uptown. The Uptown Theatre opened in 1925 and the Aragon Ballroom in 1926.

Uptown's fortunes turned in the Depression, and the 1933 extension of Lake Shore Drive to Foster let shoppers bypass the district. In the World War II housing crisis, the large rooms of luxury apartments seemed ideal to split into smaller units, and in the 1950s affordable housing drew Appalachian, Japanese American and Native American newcomers. The Uptown Chicago Commission won conservation-area status in 1966, and community groups protested the building of Truman College, which displaced several hundred residents. To the south, East Lake View became known as New Town in the early 1970s for its trendy shops and counterculture residents.

The area today

Ald. Angela Clay represents the 46th Ward from a ward office at 4544 N. Broadway. Block Club Chicago reported that Clay, an Uptown native, won the April 2023 runoff with 56 percent of the vote. The ward is mostly Uptown, with Buena Park along the lake and Sheridan Park along Wilson Avenue beside Truman College, plus a strip of Lake View around Halsted Street and Broadway. The Red Line stops at Wilson and Sheridan. Montrose Beach and Harbor mark the lakefront. The Aragon Ballroom and Riviera Theatre sit in the Uptown Square landmark district near Broadway and Lawrence, and Uptown United counts more than 240,000 annual attendees across the district's venues.

Bars and restaurants here

Broadway is the main street. Around Lawrence, the venues draw large audiences year-round, and a Northwestern professor told WBEZ that Uptown's nightlife grows from a dense, renter-oriented district. Uptown United names Broadway and Sheridan Road as commercial corridors running from Irving Park Road north to Foster Avenue. Wilson Avenue west of Broadway sits beside Truman College and the many small businesses of Sheridan Park. In the Lake View strip, Halsted Street is on the Pride Parade route, which Block Club's 2023 guide has stepping off at Broadway and Montrose and running south along Broadway and Halsted.