Video Gaming Terminals in 60630 (Jefferson Park, Chicago)

History

Jefferson Park became known as the "Gateway to Chicago" in the truck-farm years, when growers sent produce toward the city on plank roads that became Milwaukee and Elston avenues; Chicago annexed the town in 1889. East of Cicero, the 19th-century farming town of Montrose became Mayfair, a name first used for its Chicago & North Western railroad station, and a Mayfair post office opened in 1882. North Mayfair filled with brick bungalows between 1913 and 1930. In 1929 twenty-three residents organized the group that became the North Mayfair Improvement Association, which early on pressed officials to upgrade Foster Avenue, then a rough road. The Kennedy Expressway, completed in 1959, cut a diagonal through Jefferson Park, and the Jefferson Park Chamber of Commerce says hundreds of people lost their homes and businesses. The CTA opened its Jefferson Park terminal in 1970.

The area today

ZIP 60630 runs roughly from Montrose Avenue north to Bryn Mawr and from Pulaski Road west to Nagle Avenue. It takes in Jefferson Park, the south end of Gladstone Park, North Mayfair and Mayfair, and the northern edge of Portage Park. The Jefferson Park Blue Line station at 4917 N. Milwaukee connects to CTA and Pace buses and Metra's UP-NW line, which also stops at Gladstone Park. The Copernicus Center at 5216 W. Lawrence, in the former Gateway cinema, has a 1985 clock tower modeled on Warsaw's Royal Castle and hosts Taste of Polonia every Labor Day weekend. On Knox Avenue, just south of Lawrence, the Irish American Heritage Center fills a 1927 former Chicago Public School building. Owners on Lawrence between Austin and Major call that strip "Jeff West," and Block Club Chicago reported in September 2026 that a market had opened there in August.

Bars and restaurants here

Block Club Chicago's 2024 and 2025 reports describe the Windsor Tavern at 4530 N. Milwaukee as a neighborhood bar with thin-crust pizza and a heated back patio, and Corral House Bar & Grill at 5527 N. Milwaukee as built around a Wild West theme. Its August 2025 account of the Jeff West strip on Lawrence names The Brig at 5748 W. Lawrence, the longtime Brigadoon that reopened in 2023; Printers Row Brewing at 4801 N. Austin; and Vito's Vault, a 1920s-style dinner theater at 5901 W. Lawrence. Between Pulaski and Cicero, the Irish American Heritage Center at 4626 N. Knox houses the Fifth Province Pub, built from reclaimed pieces of the old school.