Video Gaming Terminals in 60618 (Avondale, Chicago)

History

Avondale grew along Milwaukee Avenue, a trail straightened and planked after 1848, and along the rail lines beside it; residents burned down the road's tollgate in 1889, the year the area was annexed to Chicago. Clay pits and brick factories near Belmont Avenue gave that stretch the name Bricktown, and by 1930 Poles made up 33 percent of Avondale's 48,000 residents. North Center grew around the same kind of brickyards on the North Branch. In 1905 the picnic grove at Belmont and Western, bought by members of a German social club in 1879, became Riverview Sharpshooters Park, the amusement park that closed after the 1967 season. Lane Technical High School went up in 1934 at Addison and Western, on land filled in 1923 for a golf course. Irving Park, whose east end the ZIP covers, began after Charles T. Race bought acreage in 1869 beside the Chicago & North Western tracks and subdivided it; a building boom between 1895 and 1914 added more than 5,000 buildings.

The area today

The ZIP runs from Diversey Avenue north to Montrose and from Damen Avenue west to about Pulaski Road. It covers Avondale, North Center and the east end of Irving Park, with Roscoe Village, a pocket of North Center, straddling the Damen edge; Lincoln Square and Albany Park lie north of Montrose. Irving Park Road crosses the whole width. The Blue Line stops at Belmont and at Addison. In Avondale, Milwaukee Avenue is one of the main streets, and St. Hyacinth Basilica, established in 1894, was one of the Polish Village's two most important churches; the neighborhood is known as the place where Eastern European and Latin American culture meet.

Bars and restaurants here

If your room is on Roscoe Street in Roscoe Village, your neighbors are Village Tap, a tavern with a sidewalk patio, and Volo, a restaurant and wine bar with a hidden patio, in a pocket known for young families. Irving Park Road near Damen holds Resi's Bierstube, a German restaurant and tavern with a beer garden. On Belmont in Avondale, Sleeping Village is a bar, music venue and beer garden, and Belmont Tavern, a Polish dive bar closed for years, reopened in 2026 with spins on classic cocktails. Elston has Chief O'Neill's, a pub and restaurant with a garden patio. The Bad Apple on Lincoln Avenue serves a curated beer selection, and Reclaimed on Western Avenue pairs live music with a patio.