Video Gaming Terminals in 60639 (Belmont Cragin, Chicago)

History

Railroads and streetcars built these blocks. By 1886 the Eclipse Furnace Company, the Expanded Metal Company and a Washburn and Moen warehouse had located along the rails in Hermosa, and developers built the Garfield subdivision for their workers. Growth waited for 1907, when streetcar lines reached North, Armitage and Fullerton avenues; by 1942 bungalows and two-flats predominated. Out west, Cragin Brothers moved a tin plate plant near Whiskey Point, at Armitage and Grand, in the 1880s, and by 1891 an iron works, an agricultural works warehouse and a malting company had followed. Chicago annexed the area as part of Jefferson Township in 1889, and the name Belmont Cragin came into use in the 1930s. Poles and Italians joined the factory workers by 1920, and in 2020 a stretch of West Diversey received the honorary name Alliance of Polish Clubs Way. Austin, along the south edge, joined Chicago in 1899, and its north end filled with brick two-flats and bungalows. The Northwest Park District, formed in 1911, set out to give each of its ten square miles a park, and began buying land for Kelvyn Park in 1914 and for Riis Park in 1916.

The area today

The ZIP runs roughly from North Avenue to Diversey Avenue and from Pulaski Road west to Narragansett Avenue. Belmont Cragin takes most of it, Hermosa takes the east end beyond the railroad tracks east of Cicero, and a strip near North Avenue is Austin. Metra's Milwaukee District West line stops at Grand/Cicero and at Hanson Park on Armitage, and the Milwaukee District North line stops at Healy on Fullerton, at the ZIP's east edge. Kelvyn Park sits just south of Diversey, midway between Cicero and Pulaski, and Riis Park on Fullerton has a swimming pool, tennis courts and a casting pool with a pier. On Armitage, the Segundo Ruiz Belvis Cultural Center occupies the old Karlov Theater.

Bars and restaurants here

If your room is on Fullerton in Belmont Cragin, a co-author of a University of Illinois Chicago study told Block Club in September 2026 that your strip is more diverse than Little Village's 26th Street, with businesses owned by Latinos from many national origins. Near Pulaski, The Levee tavern sits in a building that began as a bowling alley, then held a burlesque club called Gayety Village and later MacDuff's, until its current owner bought it and borrowed the name of a Kansas City tavern. Block Club lists it among its essential dive bars. On Armitage, Rica Arepa is a Venezuelan restaurant with a heated, enclosed patio. On Kostner, Right Bee Cider keeps bees on the roof of Hermosa's old Schwinn bicycle factory and uses the honey in some ciders.