Video Gaming Terminals in 60656 (Norwood Park, Chicago)

History

Much of this ground sat outside the old village of Norwood Park, which was annexed to Chicago in 1893. The Norwood Park Historical Society says the Oriole Park and Foster-Harlem areas were unincorporated land that joined the city mostly after World War I. The Park District says Oriole Park was semi-rural as late as 1930, a mile from the railroad station, and began filling with single-family homes in the 1920s as cheaper cars let middle-class families move out. The Edison Park District bought the park's land in 1931, and Chicago's park district added more than 16 acres between 1946 and 1951. A branch library opened on West Balmoral in 2004. Union Ridge, one of the highest points in Cook County, runs through Norwood Park, and Union Ridge Cemetery stands on Higgins Road. West of Cumberland, the Forest Preserves say Alexander Robinson, chief of several combined tribes in the early 1800s, once owned about half of the 265-acre Robinson Woods. Chicago annexed the forest preserve land named for him and his wife in 1958 and traded its Higgins Road link to O'Hare for a wider stretch along Foster Avenue in 1961. The Blue Line's Harlem station opened in 1983.

The area today

ZIP 60656 is a ragged shape on the city's far Northwest Side. East of Harlem Avenue it runs roughly from Gunnison Street north to Bryn Mawr Avenue and out to Nagle Avenue. West of Harlem it holds the blocks between Foster and Bryn Mawr avenues out to East River Road, with forest preserve beyond it, and past Cumberland Avenue the O'Hare community area begins. An arm reaches down Cumberland to Montrose Avenue, a thin one follows Foster Avenue west toward the airport, and Norridge takes a bite out of the middle. Oriole Park, 19.51 acres just south of Bryn Mawr and west of Harlem, has ball fields, tennis courts and a spray pool. The CTA lists the Blue Line's Harlem station at 5550 N. Harlem, at the ZIP's northern edge. Catherine Chevalier Woods opens on East River Road north of Foster, and Robinson Woods has a south entrance on Lawrence Avenue.

Bars and restaurants here

The Norwood Park Historical Society lists Higgins Road and Harlem Avenue among the neighborhood's commercial strips, and the Blue Line's Harlem station, with a bus terminal on Higgins, sits above the Kennedy Expressway nearby. On the O'Hare side, the 2025 Sun-Times and WBEZ report cited a Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning finding that about 60 percent of residents were born abroad and Slavic languages are the most spoken, and it describes the Pavilion Apartments, more than 1,100 units in five buildings on East River Road.