Video Gaming Terminals in 60649 (South Shore, Chicago)

History

By the early 1890s a settlement had formed near the Illinois Central station at 71st and Jeffery, which opened in 1881. It was called Bryn Mawr, and the station took the name. Parkside ran from 67th to 71st, and Essex ran south to 75th. Chicago annexed the area in 1889, and the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition drew builders, and the Windsor Park Golf Club, between 75th and 79th east of Yates, was sold and its land eventually went to apartment developers. The Park District says Jackson Park's golf course, which opened in 1899, was the first public course west of the Alleghenies. Jackson Park Highlands was laid out in 1905 with large front yards and no alleys, and the South Shore Country Club followed on the lakefront. Rainbow Beach began as two municipal beaches: Rocky Ledge, at 79th Street, from 1908, and a new beach to its north that the City Council named Rainbow in 1918. Developers put up apartment hotels along the lakefront in the 1920s, and 71st Street was well known for its St. Patrick's Day celebrations.

The area today

The City's ZIP boundary runs roughly from Stony Island Avenue east to the lake and from 79th Street north into the southern end of Jackson Park. Most of it is South Shore. The Woodlawn community area reaches in at the north, around Jackson Park's golf course, and Rainbow Beach Park sits on the lake at 77th Street. Metra Electric has three stations here: Bryn Mawr at 71st and Jeffery, South Shore at 71st near Yates and South Shore Drive, and Windsor Park at 75th and Exchange. The South Shore Cultural Center, whose Marshall & Fox clubhouse was completed in 1916, has been a Chicago Landmark since 2004. Its grounds hold a golf course, a beach and a nature sanctuary, and the clubhouse has a solarium, a dining hall and the Paul Robeson Theater. Jackson Park Highlands became a landmark district in 1989, its houses lining Bennett, Constance, Cregier and Euclid.

Bars and restaurants here

On Jeffery Boulevard just north of 71st, Block Club Chicago's June 2026 roundup of historic gay sites calls Jeffery Pub, at 7041 S. Jeffery, one of the few Black-owned LGBTQ+ bars in the city and a community staple for decades, especially for gay South Siders and queer people of color. Down on the lakefront, Nafsi, inside the South Shore Cultural Center at 7059 S. South Shore Drive, serves global favorites and a brunch menu. In 2024 the Sun-Times called it the first Black-owned fine dining restaurant in the center's history.