A day trip to Elgin, IL

We needed to go to Elgin, IL for a work-related meeting, so decided to make a day of it and spend some time walking around the town, visiting the shops (and a bar or two!), before heading to the casino for some fun!

Elgin Tower Building was built in 1929 as headquarters to the Home National Bank & Home Trust and Savings Bank - interesting and dominant Art Deco building slap bang in the center of the 'city'.




The downtown area of the city is quite an eclectic mix of different ages and styles of buildings - thankfully the city has recognized the value of the majority and slapped preservation orders on them so that developers can't just keep tearing them down and building anew. There are plenty of nice stores, cafe's, bars and restaurants to wander around - although I have to say that this Saturday afternoon is rather quiet! Maybe weekdays are busier?



There are a couple of interesting murals on the back wall of a nondescript warehouse building on the north side of town - not sure who painted them as they don't appear to be accredited to anyone






Elgin is a fast-growing city about 40 miles west of Chicago on the Fox River - likely why it first came into existence as it was on the stagecoach trail out from Chicago to Galena (which is a beautiful small old mining town on the Mississippi that once threatened to be the Midwest major city that Chicago eventually became). Apparently it was named by the founding fathers after the Scottish hymn "The song of Elgin" (there's a nice British link!)

The town is built in the valley created by the Fox River - with railway lines running alongside the river as a good example of how the railroads took priority over pretty much everything else as America became industrialized.

I suspect there was some connection with Native American Indians as some of the trees downtown have hand-knitted blankets tied around them as if there is some kind of festival underway - unfortunately I could not see anything around to give an indication of what the background to the 'exhibition' is! Here is an example of one of the blankets:





Now I'm actually editing this blog in an interesting little bar on East Chicago Street called the Elgin Public House (fancy that!). They have a couple of good craft beers on draft, free wi-fi and fantastic large hot pretzels (real ones - not those horrible faux dried things in little bags that you get on US airlines) with dipping honey mustard sauce. Nice authentic little place to spend an hour in my book.

Now - one of the big historical facts about Elgin was that it was home to the Elgin Watch Company - which employed three generations of Elginites from the late 19th to the mid 20th century, when it was the largest producer of fine watches in the United States (the factory ceased production in the early 1960s and was torn down in 1965 apparently). On Watch Street however there is still an interesting building which has been preserved - the Elgin Elgin National Watch Company Observatory - which was used to precisely calculate the time by the stars to then set the watches prior to shipping to stores....!

Elgin National Watch Company Observatory:



Well after all that historical jumbo-jumbo it was time to head down to the Grand Victoria Casino - which is a typical Midwest riverboat-based casino close to the downtown area. Now those of you that know us well are fully aware that we do enjoy a bit of a flutter from time to time - however I've got to say I was pretty disappointed with this particular casino. Way too busy (but I guess they are not complaining about that), everything felt very crammed in, and it was difficult to even get a seat on anything. On top of that there was only a handful of our favorite types of slots (25c - last of the big spenders!) - everything else was either $1 (way too extravagant) or 2c and 5c (what - you think we're cheap?)... No seats at the roulette tables and crowds around every other game in the place - you may recall I commented earlier that there was no-one around the town center on a Saturday afternoon - well now we all know where the entire Elgin population goes when not out shopping!

Grand Victoria Casino - Elgin, Illinois.


So... That was enough for one afternoon. Time to return home and a bite to eat at Aurelio's Pizza instead. I enjoyed Elgin - but don't think I could eat more than 1 a year...!


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