Video Gaming Terminals in 60612 (Near West Side, Chicago)

History

Cook County Hospital was completed in 1876, in the years after the Fire of 1871, and in 1877 Rush Medical College built beside it at Harrison and Wood. In 1917 the state acquired the vacated West Side Park, the Cubs' old ballpark at Polk and Wolcott, for the university, and the Medical Center District Act followed in 1941. Tri-Taylor, on land annexed to the city in 1851, took in Italian families by 1900, and they stayed until after World War II. East Garfield Park was annexed in 1869, and commercial development followed the new Lake Street Elevated after 1893. On Madison, promoter Paddy Harmon opened Chicago Stadium at 1800 W. Madison in 1929, and the United Center replaced it in 1994. After the 1968 rioting along Madison Street, businesses left East Garfield Park and burned buildings were not replaced.

The area today

The ZIP covers the Near West Side from Ashland Avenue out past Western, the east end of East Garfield Park to about Kedzie, and a strip of West Town and Humboldt Park north of Kinzie Street. Cook County Health, the Jesse Brown VA Medical Center, Rush University Medical Center and UI Health anchor the Illinois Medical District. Cook County's old Beaux-Arts hospital, decommissioned in 2002, has been restored as a hotel with medical offices and a food hall, and the Gateway Center, on the former Chicago Medical School site, opened in 2019 with restaurants and retail and has since added apartments and a hotel. The Blue Line stops at Illinois Medical District, the Pink Line at Polk and the Green Line at California on Lake Street. West of the campuses, Tri-Taylor's rowhouses and cottages form a National Register historic district. The United Center, home of the Bulls and Blackhawks, sits on Madison.

Bars and restaurants here

If your room is on Madison near the United Center, your calendar is the arena's: Bulls and Blackhawks games, plus the concerts and shows it books, bring fans onto the street. Around the hospitals, the VA and the campuses, the crowd is university students and the people the district draws every day, and the Gateway Center sits inside it. On Taylor and Polk, your neighbors are Tri-Taylor's rowhouses. Farther west, on Lake Street, where storefronts grew up along the elevated tracks, and on Madison toward Kedzie, you are in East Garfield Park, serving the blocks around you.