Video Gaming Terminals in 60608 (Lower West Side, Chicago)

History

Bridgeport grew up around the Illinois & Michigan Canal, begun in 1836. Irish canal workers lived along Archer Avenue, named for canal supervisor William Beatty Archer, and after the canal opened in 1848 lumber yards and packinghouses lined the river. Poles and Lithuanians later settled along Morgan Street, and after 1880 streetcars made Halsted and 35th the shopping corner in place of Archer.

Across the South Branch, Bohemians displaced by the fire of 1871 settled the Lower West Side and named it Pilsen after one of the largest cities in their homeland; the lumber yards and the McCormick Reaper Works on Western hired them. The blocks around Cermak and Damen were Heart of Chicago, German and Irish at first and largely Polish by the turn of the century. The swampy triangle between Archer, Ashland and 35th was called Mt. Pleasant; within five years of the fire, 11 factories and 27 brickyards had opened in the area, and in October 1901 the South Park Commission named its new park for the assassinated President McKinley. After the Stevenson Expressway was completed in 1964, Mexican families leaving the Near West Side resettled in Pilsen, and around that year leaders west of Western began calling South Lawndale "Little Village."

The area today

The ZIP runs from University Village, just south of Roosevelt Road, down to about 35th Street, and from Halsted west past California, with the Illinois Medical District just north of the line. Pilsen's 18th Street is the main drag: taquerias, coffee shops, bars such as The Alderman and Punch House, live music at Thalia Hall, the National Museum of Mexican Art; the Pink Line stops at 18th, Damen and Western. West of Damen, Cermak and the Oakley strip near 24th are Heart of Chicago, where a few of the Italian dining rooms that once lined Oakley remain. Past Western, 26th Street is the east end of Little Village's "Calle Mexico." South of the river, Archer Avenue crosses the north half of McKinley Park between Ashland and Western; the 35th/Archer Orange Line stop and the park itself sit just over the ZIP line. Bridgeport's blocks north of 35th along Halsted and Morgan Street finish it.

Bars and restaurants here

If your room is on 18th Street, you know the day belongs to the taquerias and coffee shops and the night to the bars, when the crowd moves between the margarita patios near Racine and the cocktail rooms toward Allport. On Oakley at 24th, a few old-line Italian dining rooms remain from a strip that once had dozens. Around Archer and 34th in McKinley Park, a classic diner with a shaded patio and a Mexican seafood house with a rooftop deck set the tone for a big-group strip. At 31st and Morgan in Bridgeport, Maria's Packaged Goods, the Marszewski family's bar and liquor store, anchors the corner with its patio and the Korean-Polish counter Kimski next door; Halsted, a short walk east, was once "Lithuanian Downtown."