![]() The city's population was also beginning to shrink as people flocked to the suburbs. "Everything just demolished after the stockyards moved out," Kurek says. And fewer workers meant fewer customers for places like Stanley's. In the '50s, blue-collar industries like meat-packing began leaving Chicago. 1955–1989: Bars begin to shut their doors "There was enough people for everybody," she says.īut this second heyday of Chicago taverns would not last. Kurek says those were the busy years on Whiskey Row, despite the area being crowded with other bars. ![]() In 1947, the number of taverns peaked around seven thousand. "So at seven o'clock in the morning, the guys were leaving work because the others were starting."īy the late 1940s, areas like Whiskey Row had cropped up in other industrial corridors around the city. "There were three shifts in the stockyards," Kurek says. The stockyards employed thousands of men, who kept Stanley's and nearby bars flowing with customers all day long. "It opened at seven in the morning and used to close at two in the evening, seven days a week," she says. His daughter, Wanda Kurek, now 95, remembers helping her parents clean the bar every morning as a child. Stanley Kurek opened Stanley's Tavern on Whiskey Row in 1935. This stretch, lined with tavern after tavern, was known as "Whiskey Row." One famously boozy area was the strip of Ashland Avenue between Pershing Road and 47th Street, on the western edge of the Union Stockyards. Many new bars at this time catered to Chicago's working class. That number continued to increase throughout much of the '30s and '40s.Įnthusiasm for legal drinking after Prohibition helped drive this second boom in taverns, as did the growth of Chicago's population and industrial sector throughout the 1940s. More than 5,000 taverns had set up shop in Chicago by the end of 1933. ![]() Enthusiasm for legal drinking after Prohibition helped usher in a second boom in taverns. "There are stories of people going to breweries and hanging outside and shaking the fences," Garibay says.Ī group of Chicagoans celebrates the repeal of Prohibition in 1933. When Prohibition was repealed in 1933, Chicagoans wasted no time opening up taverns and going out to drink. 1933–1955: Bars boom again after Prohibition But Chicago's bar scene would come roaring back to life soon enough. "We raised the saloon as a pet and then gave it the chloroform," wrote Chicago journalist George Ade. In January 1920, Prohibition went into effect, banning the production, transport and sale of alcohol nationwide. It was also relatively easy to open a new tavern: Liquor licenses were widely available, and a saloon-keeper needed to invest very little money because breweries would usually provide saloon-keepers with the storefront, alcohol, glassware, and furniture they needed.īut as these saloons were flourishing, the temperance movement, a social movement that advocated against the consumption of alcohol, was picking up momentum. "At the end of the day, you want to be able to go to a bar where people speak like you, look like you, understand you," Garibay says. At its peak in 1905, the city counted 8,097 saloons, or one saloon for every 239 residents. Men stand in front of a Chicago bar circa 1895. ![]() However, from the 1890s through the 1910s, the first heyday of Chicago taverns, there was definitely no shortage of barrooms. There was never actually a bar on every corner of the city, as Patrick heard. 1890–1919: A bar on (nearly) every corner Why they disappeared has to do with the city's shifting demographics, a change in attitudes towards public drinking and the lasting influence of a Chicago political institution: the Daley family. In the early 1900s, Chicago had more than 8,000 saloons (an old-fashioned version of the modern tavern) - more than nine times the number today. What happened to all the bars in Chicago? But that's clearly no longer the case, so he asked Curious City: He's heard things used to be different - that there was once a bar or tavern on every corner in Chicago. "Some of the favorite bars that I had gone to in the past are not around," he says. But Patrick says he's gotten used to seeing these neighborhood taverns shut their doors. So he was disappointed when he drove by Schaller's Pump in Bridgeport, one of the oldest bars in the city, and saw it had closed. Patrick McBriarty likes to try different bars in Chicago. Photo courtesy Chicago History Museum / photo illustration by Katherine Nagasawa/WBEZ ![]()
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