Urbana-Lincoln Hotel-Lincoln Square Mall

Urbana--Lincoln Hotel--Lincoln Square Mall
Location 300 S. Broadway Ave., Urbana, Illinois
Coordinates 40°6′38″N 88°12′26″W / 40.11056°N 88.20722°W / 40.11056; -88.20722Coordinates: 40°6′38″N 88°12′26″W / 40.11056°N 88.20722°W / 40.11056; -88.20722
Area 13.9 acres (5.6 ha)
Built 1923 (1923)
Architect Royer, Joseph; Gruen, Victor
Architectural style Tudor Revival
NRHP Reference # 06000778[1]
Added to NRHP September 8, 2006

The Urbana-Lincoln Hotel – Lincoln Square Mall is a historic building complex located at 300 South Broadway Avenue in Urbana, Illinois. The Tudor Revival style hotel was built in 1923. In 1964, the mall was built as an extension of the hotel; it was one of the first fully enclosed shopping malls in Illinois. Both the hotel and the mall are still in operation, and the building complex was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2006.[1]

Hotel history

A local booster organization called the Urbana Hotel Company began raising money for a hotel in Urbana in 1921. The group raised $223,000 by selling shares in the hotel, and construction on the Urbana-Lincoln Hotel began in 1923. The hotel opened to guests by November of that year and was formally dedicated on January 31, 1924. Local architect Joseph Royer designed the hotel in the Tudor Revival style; the building features extensive half-timbering on its stucco exterior. The hotel was not profitable, and the Urbana Hotel Company went bankrupt in 1937; the hotel stayed open after the company was reorganized. A new management company, the Urbana-Lincoln Company, took over the hotel in 1944 and extensively modernized it in the following decade. The hotel was incorporated into the mall's plans from the outset and was sold to mall owners Carson Pirie Scott shortly after the mall opened. After failing to turn a profit, the hotel closed in 1975 and was slated to be demolished; however, new owners renovated and reopened the hotel later in the decade, and an addition was built on the building in 1982. The hotel has passed through several owners since and remains in operation.[2]

Mall history

Due to a general sentiment that Urbana's economy was stagnating, local business leaders reached out to several large retailers in the late 1950s in an attempt to attract a store to the city. Carson Pirie Scott expressed interest in the city if it were willing to build a large commercial development, sparking the Lincoln Square Mall project. The city began plans for a mall in 1960 and hired nationally recognized developer Victor Gruen to plan the mall. The Urbana Central Development Company, a subsidiary of Carson Pirie Scott, acquired the land for the mall in 1961, and the name Lincoln Square was chosen the following year. The mall was built and opened in 1964; when it opened, it became the first fully enclosed shopping mall in Illinois outside of the Chicago metropolitan area. Illinois Governor Otto Kerner, Jr. and both of the state's U.S. Senators attended the mall's grand opening on September 17. The mall's stores mainly sold clothing and other fashionable goods in order to draw shoppers from surrounding areas; the developers intended for the mall to serve residents in a 50-mile (80 km) radius around Urbana. The mall was successful during its first two decades, and most of its original businesses either stayed or were replaced by similar businesses. Starting in the mid-1980s, however, competition from surrounding malls led to the beginning of the mall's decline. Carson Pirie Scott sold the mall in 1988; its anchor store was converted to a Bergner's and later a Herberger's. Herberger's and the mall's ownership group renovated the mall in 1994, but Herberger's went bankrupt three years later, and its store closed in 2002; the mall failed to attract another anchor and subdivided the store's space into smaller stores. The mall remains open and continues to house many smaller stores, law offices, and healthcare providers.[2]

References

  1. 1 2 National Park Service (2010-07-09). "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service.
  2. 1 2 Kummer, Karen Lang (April 2006). "National Register of Historic Places Registration Form: Urbana-Lincoln Hotel / Lincoln Square Mall" (PDF). Illinois Historic Preservation Agency. Retrieved April 12, 2015.
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