Video Gaming Terminals in 60632 (Archer Heights, Chicago)

History

Archer Road, named for Illinois and Michigan Canal commissioner William B. Archer, was among the first routes into Chicago from this part of the Southwest Side, and the neighborhoods around it grew up beside railroads and factories. Brighton Park traded livestock in the late 1850s until the Union Stock Yard, finished in 1865, closed its yards; the Santa Fe Railroad built its Corwith Yards there in 1887, and the Crane Manufacturing Company ran a plant from 1915 to 1977. Archer Heights had little more than swamp and farms until developers arrived after 1900; Archer Avenue had electric streetcar service by 1906, and that helped draw Polish, Italian, Lithuanian and Czech workers, and St. Bruno parish followed in 1925. German farmers settled Gage Park in the 1840s, and a trolley line reaching Western and Kedzie early in the 1900s helped set off a building boom. West Elsdon grew from 3,255 residents in 1940 to its peak of 14,215 in 1960, almost all of it detached brick houses. Archer Heights began to change in the 1990s as more Mexican immigrants arrived, and by 2000, 69 percent of Brighton Park's residents were of Mexican origin and 79 percent of Gage Park's were Hispanic.

The area today

The ZIP code takes in nearly all of Archer Heights and Brighton Park and the northern parts of West Elsdon and Gage Park, with slices of South Lawndale and Garfield Ridge along Cicero, roughly from 35th Street south to 55th and from Western Avenue west to Cicero. City Cast Chicago calls both Archer Heights and Brighton Park largely Latino today, and describes Archer Avenue as cutting through Brighton Park and home to many businesses and institutions. The Polish thread continues on Archer, where the Polish Highlanders Alliance, formed in Chicago in 1929, keeps Dom Podhalan as its hall. The Orange Line stops at Pulaski, at 5106 S. Pulaski, and at Kedzie, at 4900 S. Kedzie. In 1979 Pope John Paul II celebrated Mass in the parking lot of Five Holy Martyrs, the Polish parish on Richmond Street.

Bars and restaurants here

If your room is on 47th Street, Archer Avenue or Pulaski Road, these are some of your neighbors. City Cast Chicago's Archer Heights guide calls Illinois Bar & Grill, at 4135 W. 47th, longstanding and recommends its burgers. On Archer, Dom Podhalan, the Polish Highlanders' hall at 4808 S. Archer, has a restaurant, a large and a small banquet hall and an old bar, and lists its rooms for weddings, baptisms and communions. On Pulaski, Peke's Pozole opened in 2018 and, as of a March 2024 Sun-Times report, sits at 4710 S. Pulaski; its dining room has a mural and tiger masks, and the menu leads with pozole in three styles.