The rise and fall of a suburban shopping center
Tuesday would have been the Randhurst Mall’s sixtieth birthday, and must be celebrated by artwork historians who revere the Basilica of Saint-Denis. For simply because the twelfth century French church pioneered the Gothic model, the Mount Prospect buying heart put the capstone on twentieth century suburban design.
Victor Gruen, Randhurst’s architect, usually proclaimed the American buying heart the trendy equal of Europe’s medieval cathedral.
Clearly, self-interest underlay that verdict. Nonetheless, Randhurst was awe-inspiring.
Protecting one million sq. toes, air-conditioned, roofed and sporting a large dome, it enabled shoppers to mark life’s rhythms, rain or shine. At its 1962 opening, Maurice L. Rothschild took an advert within the Tribune touting the back-to-school buying alternatives of the Loop product owner’s new suburban department.
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Pictured was a teen in a T-shirt and briefs. “The beginning of a

