Video Gaming Terminals in 60654 (Near North Side, Chicago)

History

Chicago's earliest Italian immigrant community on the Near North Side settled near Assumption Church. In 1899 the church built Assumption School on Erie Street between Franklin and Orleans, among warehouses, factories and working-class housing; Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini, the first American citizen canonized by the Roman Catholic Church, founded it, and the City landmarked it in 2003. Reid, Murdoch & Co., a wholesale grocer, put up its warehouse and offices at 320 N. Clark in 1914, one of the first designs to answer the 1909 Plan of Chicago's call for a redeveloped riverfront, with loading docks at the water and a promenade above. The Merchandise Mart was Marshall Field & Co.'s wholesale showroom building and the largest in the world when it went up; Joseph P. Kennedy bought it in 1945 and his family kept it until 1998. A janitors' union commissioned Marina City, which Bertrand Goldberg designed and which rose on the river between State and Dearborn in the 1960s. Around the first Chicago International Art Exposition at Navy Pier in 1981, dealers found loft space in a new gallery district centered on Superior and Huron, and its openings guide grew into Chicago Gallery News.

The area today

This ZIP is River North, roughly from the Chicago River north to Chicago Avenue and from State Street west to Halsted Street. The Brown and Purple lines stop at Merchandise Mart, 350 N. Wells; the Red Line's Grand station sits on State Street at the eastern edge, and Chicago/Franklin is just north of the line at Chicago Avenue. ART on THE MART, begun in 2018, projects contemporary art across the Mart's 2.5-acre facade. Chicago Gallery News lists a River North gallery district running from Superior and Franklin streets and West Chicago Avenue down to the Mart.

Bars and restaurants here

If your room is on Hubbard Street west of Clark, Celeste at 111 W. Hubbard and Joy District at 112 W. Hubbard face each other: Celeste has a pub, a Deco Room for craft cocktails and a fourth-floor rooftop garden under a retractable glass roof, while Joy District puts a sports bar on its first floor and a club and rooftop bar upstairs. On Franklin, Gene & Georgetti at 500 N. Franklin sits across from Assumption Church; ABC7 reported in 2024 that the steakhouse had been on the Near North Side for 83 years and was in its third generation of owners. On Orleans, SIFR at 660 N. Orleans cooks most dishes over an open hearth and keeps a rooftop terrace.