Video Gaming Terminals in 60651 (Humboldt Park, Chicago)

History

The Humboldt Park blocks west of the park were mostly prairie when Chicago annexed the community in 1869, and a street railway arrived in 1886. Many early residents worked at the Chicago & North Western Railroad's shops at Pulaski. Danish families lined North Avenue from Damen to Pulaski by 1900, and North Avenue became the main shopping street, with banks, theaters and restaurants around North and Crawford, now Pulaski. The Humboldt Park branch of the L ran just north of North Avenue until the CTA closed it in 1952. By 1930 Poles, Italians and Russian Jews had joined the Germans and Scandinavians, and in the 1960s Puerto Ricans, and later Mexicans, moved into the community's eastern section. Henry Austin's temperance village of 1865 ran from Chicago Avenue south to Madison Street. After Austin joined Chicago in 1899, builders filled its north end, the west half of this ZIP, with brick two-flats, small frame houses and bungalows; by 1980 most of Austin's residents were African American. Jens Jensen drew plans in 1918 for a school-and-park center there that were never built, and the site was named La Follette Park in 1926.

The area today

The ZIP is a West Side rectangle, roughly Chicago Avenue north to North Avenue and Kedzie Avenue west to Austin Boulevard. The Humboldt Park community area takes the east end, out to a couple of blocks east of Cicero Avenue, and Austin takes the rest. A resident-drawn map reported by Block Club in February 2025 pushes Humboldt Park's western edge out to Cicero. The park itself and Paseo Boricua are east of the ZIP. No L station sits inside it, but the 70 Division and 66 Chicago buses both end their west-end runs at Austin. La Follette Park, at 1333 N. Laramie, covers 18.7 acres and has a fieldhouse with an indoor pool, a gymnasium and an auditorium. At 5200 W. Chicago Avenue, the Laramie State Bank Building, built from 1927 to 1929, has been a Chicago Landmark since 1995.

Bars and restaurants here

If your room is on Chicago Avenue west of Cicero, you are on the Soul City Corridor, which the state named a cultural district in May 2025, according to Block Club.