Chicago’s Only Pinball Museum Moving From Pilsen To The Loop This Summer

THE LOOP — Chicago’s only museum dedicated to all things pinball is coming to the Loop this summer.

The Flip: Chicago’s Playable Pinball Museum will open at Block 37 this summer, though it doesn’t have an opening date yet, founder William Pietri said. It will have more than 30 playable machines from the 1930s to today, plus exhibits so people can learn more about the game and its history.

The space will be open during Block 37 mall hours: 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Monday-Saturday and 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Sundays.

The Flip has had a “prototype” space in Pilsen since 2024, but its new location will be much larger — expanding from 550 square feet in Pilsen to 2,900 square feet Downtown.

While the nonprofit museum was free in Pilsen, there will be ticketed admission at the new location, although an admission charge has yet to be set. People will be able to come in and play a few machines at the front or pay for a ticket and explore the entire space and its exhibits, Pietri said.

Pietri was born in Wisconsin and grew up in Michigan. He lived in Chicago for five years before moving to the Bay Area, where he volunteered at a pinball museum. When he decided to return to Chicago, he wanted to bring that museum experience with him, so he bought half a dozen pinball machines while he was still in California.

Pietri moved back to Chicago in 2024 and opened The Flip in Pilsen that July.

Like many people, Pietri grew up with pinball, he said. When he’d join his dad at the bar, he’d often pass the time playing on the machines. He bought his first machine a few years after college.

But through The Flip, Pietri has been able to dive deeper into the game’s technology and learn more about its Chicago-specific history — like that pinball was banned in the city, and in Los Angeles and New York, for nearly 40 years because it was considered a form of gambling.

Chicago is considered “the home of pinball,” Pietri said. “This has always been the heart of the industry.”

The first commercial pinball machine was made in Ohio in 1931, and the industry rapidly developed in the Chicago area through the decade, Pietri said. Even today, the Chicago suburbs are home to the largest pinball machine manufacturers, including Stern Pinball, the world’s oldest and largest producer of arcade-quality pinball machines.

Stern helped keep pinball alive when video games emerged in the 2000s, Pietri said.

“A guy named Gary Stern, whose dad was in the pinball business, bought the pieces of one manufacturer and started Stern Pinball,” Pietri said. Stern “totally carried it through kind of the dark period of 2000 to 2010. They’ve been leading the resurgence [of pinball], and so I’m delighted to see it coming back.”

The International Flipper Pinball Association — the primary global group for competitive pinball that hosts global, national, state and provincial championships — has grown from nearly 60,000 active players in 2018 to more than 153,000 active players today. In 2007, it had just 500 players ranked, the Reader reported.

Pinball’s comeback prompted Stern to move its facility in 2015, upgrading from a 40,000-square-foot factory in Melrose Park to a 110,000-square-foot building in Elk Grove — about doubling its design, engineering and production capacity.

Stern attributed the move and expansion “to the continued worldwide growth of the pinball industry, the resurgence of which has been fueled by a rapidly growing international collector community, expanding competitive player leagues, and renewed commercial demand driven by a new generation of players discovering the allure of the silver ball.”

Elk Grove is also home to American Pinball and Jersey Jack Pinball, which relocated its manufacturing from New Jersey to Illinois in 2020.

Pietri is “delighted” to witness the pinball renaissance, he said.

“I will see people coming of all ages — 4-year-olds, teenagers on up — who’ve never played pinball but really get into it,” Pietri said. “There’s a physicality to it and a reality to it that they can’t get on their phones.”

In the past year, Pietri has built up a volunteer crew of about a dozen people. Pietri was drawn to the Downtown location because of its proximity to the pedway, its attraction to tourists and it being “central to everybody.”

With a background in tech, Pietri’s also interested in prototyping and restoring machines, he said.

Pietri hopes the museum can be a destination for tourists and families while also appealing to pinball fans and curious people who enjoy smaller museums and learning about new niches, he said.

“It appeals to so many people … so this is an all-ages venue,” Pietri said. “I hope [visitors] get the chance to play games and learn more about the industry and understand its connection to other industries.”

While the museum started as Pietri’s “own little insane project,” he’s been pleasantly surprised by how excited and supportive people have been.

People can follow The Flip on Instagram and Facebook.

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