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BEHIND THE SCENES
Greg Peerbolte, Executive Director of the Mt Prospect Historical Society, takes us behind the scenes of the original 1962 Randhurst Center and it's new incarnation, Randhurst Village.
Want to learn more? Read Peerbolte's book, Randhurst, Suburban Chicago's Grandest Shopping Center, available at the CAF Shop.
Our cameras can't take you behind the scenes of the original Randhurst Center because it was demolished in 2008.Instead, Greg Peerbolte has shared a wealth of materials from the Mt. Prospect Historical Center archive:
Publicity from the 1960s
Photos of the original model
Directories & staff newsletters
Original architect renderings
"Historic Illinois Mall Seeks New Life as Main Street" >New York Times article by Robert Sharoff
"Suburbia Revised: Confronting shuttered shopping centers and empty big-boxes, developers try turning malls into Main Streets" >Chicago Tribune article by Blair Kamin
Historic photos of Randhurst Center >Website on retail history
Randhurst Village demographic studies, maps, 3D animated rendering >Info on new Randhurst Village from the developer
Photos of Randhurst Center right before the demolition >Flickr set that illustrates the "dead mall" concept
Presented by the National Endowment for the Arts. These talks are also made possible in part by a donation in memory of Myra Gary, Docent Class of 1999.
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