Video Gaming Terminals in 60603 (Loop, Chicago)

History

The Loop's name apparently comes from the downtown pulley where the cable cars' cables turned around; the ring of elevated tracks that took the name was completed in 1897. Streetcars first ran on State Street in 1859, and after the Civil War Potter Palmer pulled retail from Lake Street to State Street with a hotel, an emporium and other mercantile buildings. His first Palmer House opened in September 1870 and burned in the Fire of 1871. The seven-story replacement that opened in 1875, touted as the nation's only fireproof hotel, stood until 1925, when today's 25-story Palmer House, briefly the largest hotel in the world, took its place. The skyscraper rose here in the 1880s, and the Marquette Building on Dearborn at Adams, built in 1895, put the steel frame on its face. Louis Sullivan's Schlesinger and Mayer store went up at State and Madison between 1898 and 1904, and Herman Berghoff opened his cafe on Adams in 1898. In 1963 the First National Bank bought the 45-story Morrison Hotel, razed the block bounded by Clark, Dearborn, Madison and Monroe, and in 1969 opened the tower now called Chase Tower.

The area today

The ZIP runs roughly from Madison to Adams, Michigan Avenue to LaSalle. The Michigan Avenue streetwall, a Chicago Landmark district since 2002 with buildings from 1882 to 1930, faces Grant Park; the Art Institute, founded in 1879, sits on it at Adams with its Modern Wing entrance on Monroe. Behind it are the Palmer House on Monroe, Miller's Pub on Wabash since 1935, the Sullivan Center at State and Madison, the Marquette Building's Tiffany lobby and Chase Tower's Chagall-mosaic plaza. The Red Line subway stops at Monroe and State, the Blue Line at Monroe and Dearborn, and the Brown, Green, Orange, Pink and Purple lines stop at Adams/Wabash. Weekends carry the crowd: Chicago Loop Alliance counts put weekend foot traffic in the Loop above its 2019 level in the third quarter of 2025, while weekday traffic on State Street in the second quarter of 2026 was still about 82% of 2019's.

Bars and restaurants here

If your room is on Adams, Monroe or Wabash, the weekday shape is a lunch rush and an after-work hour from the office towers on LaSalle, Clark and Dearborn, thinner on the days hybrid schedules keep people home. The Berghoff on Adams, holder of the city's first post-Prohibition liquor license, still runs on German food and beer brewed in the building; Miller's Pub under the el on Wabash runs on booths, dark wood, stained glass and a long bar for the Art Institute crowd, the post-game burger and the late nightcap. On the Michigan Avenue streetwall the rooms trade on the park view and the museum and hotel traffic, and the fuller days come on weekends.