Video Gaming Terminals in 60609 (New City, Chicago)

History

The Union Stock Yard opened on Christmas Day 1865 outside Chicago's city limits, and the area was annexed in 1889. East of the yards, Canaryville grew as an Irish Catholic neighborhood around St. Gabriel's Parish; its commercial center was Halsted Street, where saloons and gambling houses such as O'Leary's served customers tied to meatpacking. West and south of the yards, Back of the Yards was settled by Irish and German butchers, then by Czechs, Poles, Lithuanians and Slovaks gathered around their parishes. In 1889 developer Samuel Gross built workingmen's cottages there, and in the 1930s residents founded the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council. Fuller Park, a narrow strip between Pershing Road and Garfield Boulevard, began with Irish railroad and stockyard workers and lost a third of its residents to the Dan Ryan Expressway in the 1950s. Every major packinghouse closed between 1952 and 1962, and the yards followed in 1971.

The area today

The limestone Stock Yard Gate still stands at Exchange Avenue and Peoria Street, a Chicago Landmark since 1972, and the old yard grounds became an industrial park. Back of the Yards' business strips are 47th Street and Ashland Avenue, where the City describes local shops, restaurants and murals. The Goldblatt's building at 47th and Ashland houses part of the United Yards development, and The Plant, a former meatpacking building on 46th Street, is now a business incubator. Canaryville lies east of Halsted between 40th and 47th Streets. The Red Line stops at 47th and Garfield; the Orange Line stops at Western and 35th/Archer. Fuller Park runs along the Dan Ryan, and the ZIP's north end reaches Bridgeport and McKinley Park, with an edge of Gage Park to the southwest.

Bars and restaurants here

If your room is on 47th Street or Ashland, you are among neighborhood shops and restaurants, with a coffee shop that reopened in the Goldblatt's building in 2025 among the newer neighbors. Around 43rd Street and Ashland, a run of taverns known as Whiskey Row once served the stockyard shifts. In Canaryville, Halsted's saloon tradition runs back to the packinghouse days, and its Irish roots now share the neighborhood with a sizable Mexican community.