Video Gaming Terminals in 60606 (Loop, Chicago)

History

West end of the Loop plus the first West Loop blocks across the river: Wells Street to Canal, the main stem down to Van Buren. South Water Street was the young city's hub in the 1830s, with Lake Street, a block south, soon a retail street. The 1871 fire leveled the central city, and more than 200,000 people took refuge on the Near West Side across the river. The elevated loop was completed in 1897; its Wells Street leg is this ZIP's east edge. Union Station, called for in Daniel Burnham's 1909 Plan of Chicago and built by four railroads, opened on Canal Street in 1925. The plan also replaced the South Water Street produce market with a double-decked riverfront drive, begun in 1924, opened in October 1926 and named for Plan Commission chairman Charles Wacker. The Civic Opera House, Samuel Insull's 45-story "throne" on Wacker, opened on November 4, 1929, six days after the stock market crash; the same year the Daily News Building rose at 2 North Riverside Plaza, the city's first office building built above railroad tracks. Sears Tower, completed in 1973 as the world's tallest building at 110 stories, became Willis Tower in 2009.

The area today

The west side of the Loop is an office district first: the office towers along Franklin, Wells and Wacker, Willis Tower on South Wacker, and the Civic Opera Building between Washington and Madison, home to Lyric Opera of Chicago since 1954. Across the river, Union Station, a Chicago Landmark since 2002 and the last of the city's great railroad terminals still in use, anchors the Canal Street and Riverside Plaza blocks; the Daily News Building there was landmarked in 2026. The Brown, Orange, Pink and Purple lines stop at Washington/Wells and Quincy on the Wells Street el, and commuter and intercity trains run out of Union Station. The Riverwalk's final stretch opened in 2016; its Jetty and Riverbank sections, Wells to Lake, are this ZIP's river edge. Most of the night here is the after-work hour.

Bars and restaurants here

If your room is on Wacker, Franklin or Wells, your crowd comes down from the office floors, and it is a weekday crowd. The commuter stream to the Quincy and Washington/Wells platforms and to Union Station passes your door on its way out of town. Monk's Pub at Lake and Wells, a timber-lined room billed as one of the oldest bars in the Loop, has been there since 1971. Across the river, the Canal Street and Riverside Plaza blocks live on Union Station foot traffic.