The story
Opened mid-March 1961 at Rand and Central despite construction delays. It brought national chains and car-oriented shopping that displaced the small-town downtown of the 1950s. Still operating today.
Everything that was here
- 1961–present · still open
Mount Prospect PlazaShopping Center
Mount Prospect's first strip mall opened with an unpaved parking lot.
See the map in 1962 → - 1925–present
Zenith WJAZ Broadcasting StationOther
The radio station that got charged with 'piracy of the free air' and won.
See the map in 1926 → - 1961–1977
Goldblatt's Department StoreRetail Store
A four-alarm fire on a frozen February Sunday ended Goldblatt's in Mount Prospect.
See the map in 1962 →
Nearby history
St. Paul Lutheran Church (1913 building)
100 S Elm St · 921 m away
The English-language Lutheran church that marked Mount Prospect's turn from farm to town.
Central School (1896)
101 S Maple St · 998 m away
The one-room school where the church, the fire department, the women's club and the library were all born.
Mount Prospect Creamery
302 E Northwest Hwy · 1.1 km away
The dairy plant that made Mount Prospect a milk town.
1891 Financial Life/National Catholic Society of Foresters
320 S. School Street · 1.1 km away
Mount Prospect Public Library
10 S Emerson St · 1.2 km away
Three library buildings on one Emerson Street block since 1950.
Mount Prospect Police & Fire Headquarters (Public Safety Building)
112 E Northwest Hwy · 1.2 km away
A 1991 public-safety building that lasted barely three decades.
Know something about Mount Prospect Plaza? An old photo, a date, a memory of what stood here before?
Add it on the map