Video Gaming Terminals in 60605 (Loop, Chicago)

History

Chicago's nineteenth-century railroads built their depots in a circle around the edge of the business district, and the south edge of that circle is where 60605 begins. Dearborn Street Station opened at Polk Street in 1885, a Romanesque Revival terminal by Cyrus L. W. Eidlitz, and the printing trade settled beside it: the blocks of Dearborn, Federal and Plymouth between Congress Parkway and Polk became the printing center of the Midwest. The long, narrow blocks gave engravers and typesetters the light they needed; the Duplicator Building went up in 1886, the Pontiac Building in 1891. On Michigan Avenue, Adler and Sullivan finished the Auditorium Building in 1889 as hotel, offices and theater in one. The printers began leaving in the 1960s and the trains stopped in 1971; by the late 1970s plants like the Donohue Building were becoming lofts, and in 1977 business leaders persuaded George Halas to turn over 51 acres of rail yards south of the station for Dearborn Park. On the lakefront the Field Museum opened in 1921, Soldier Field was dedicated in 1926, and the Shedd Aquarium and Adler Planetarium followed in 1930.

The area today

The Printing House Row District, a Chicago Landmark since 1996, is lofts, small shops and restaurants now; the last publisher, Palmer Printing, left in 2018, and the Printers Row Lit Fest takes over Dearborn every summer. Dearborn Station holds retail, offices and the Jazz Showcase. North of Harrison the ZIP takes in the Harold Washington Library Center at 400 South State, open since October 7, 1991, plus the Michigan Avenue blocks of Columbia College, there since 1977, and Roosevelt University, which bought the Auditorium Building in 1947. South of Roosevelt Road the high-rises run down Michigan, Wabash and Indiana to the Museum Campus, finished in 1998 when the roads between the Field, the Shedd and the Adler came out and sixty acres of asphalt became parkland, with Soldier Field and the 119-acre Northerly Island beyond. The Red Line subway stops at Harrison, the Blue Line at LaSalle beside the Metra Rock Island trains, and the Red, Orange and Green lines meet at Roosevelt, three blocks from the Metra Electric stop.

Bars and restaurants here

If your room is on Dearborn between Harrison and Polk, your crowd lives upstairs in the lofts and knows the bartender by name: Kasey's Tavern has poured on that strip since 1974, with a bar on the site for more than a century, drawing construction workers and lawyers alike, while a newer craft-cocktail room in a former printing-press building shows where the block is headed. Dearborn is quieter than nearby State Street or Wabash; Dearborn Station catches the Jazz Showcase crowd and the new bar that took the old Bar Louie space. The Michigan Avenue side trades on hotel guests, Columbia and Roosevelt students and museum visitors; from Roosevelt south along Michigan, Wabash and Indiana it is the high-rise residents, plus the Soldier Field and Northerly Island crowds.