How Market Square Survived the Onslaught of Suburban Malls

By Carol Summerfield

After weathering the Great Depression and the austerity and rations of World War II, downtown Lake Forest was ready for a shopping bonanza. Decades of restrictions meant there was an incredible pent-up demand for shopping: residents sought out everything from new clothes to imported food to the new craze for midcentury home décor.

Americans were ready to get their consumerism on. And they did. Local shopping districts like Market Square were ripe to benefit from the new growth of consumer dollars.

Second-generation owner Adair Foster looks at a Town & Country magazine with her husband, Volney, at what was then known as the Lake Forest Sports Shop in 1972. In 1950, stores in Market Square included long-standing gems like The Lake Forest Shop (then called the Lake Forest Sports Shop) and Smith’s Men’s Store. Marshall Field’s was a center point, literally and figuratively, in the shopping corridor. Helander’s was wrapping up its first year of business in Market Square, and Garnett Company had expanded into a second storefront. With the completion of the Edens Expressway on Dec. 20, 1951, more people could get up to Lake Forest quickly and easily for an afternoon of shopping. Things were looking up for local retailers in the charming Market Square.

Then in 1956, amid the explosion of shopping across the area, Old Orchard Mall, the first mall of its kind, opened. With its plentiful parking and anchored by a new Marshall Field’s, shopping became a weekend pastime. Teens found themselves spending entire Saturdays at the mall. You could shop in the morning, grab lunch, catch a movie, then have dinner without leaving the mall.

How was Market Square going to compete with that?

Retail tenants were asking for larger, more visible signage over their stores to incorporate more contemporary advertising. Glass transom windows had been filled in,  and original architectural features were covered to make the shopping area feel more modern.

Boutique clothing stores like The Lake Forest Shop found they could successfully sell independent clothing lines that drew on global styles, offering a difference from chain retailers. Resident Virginia Fiester Frederick was one such designer. Her career reached one pinnacle when her designs were commissioned for the White House wedding of President Lyndon Johnson’s daughter in 1966, creating much demand for her wedding-dress designs.

The Deerpath Theater held movie premieres, complete with celebrity guests. While the interior didn’t get a refresh until the 1970s, the theater worked to compete with the new multi-screen offerings of the mall by making the movie experience an event.

Shoppers were getting used to using their cars to do everything. What might have once been a stroll to get to the business district became a car trip. The City and the Lake Forest Improvement Trust confronted a new scarcity of parking around Market Square. The existing lots became so congested that in 1954, the Trust investigated converting the greensward into additional parking spaces. The Trust decided instead to purchase the vacant lot north of the Post Office in 1955 to add more options for drivers.

But the competition kept expanding. Woodfield Mall was the largest indoor mall in America when it opened in 1971. With Hawthorn Mall (1973) and Northbrook Court (1976), Market Square faced increased competition to keep shoppers staying local.

To entice the growing group of teen shoppers, department stores began to create teen-focused clothing lines. Stores that solely focused on teen shoppers quickly followed.

JT’s of Lake Forest, which opened around 1985, catered to young men’s and women’s fashion. It lasted less than five years, failing to compete successfully against the rise of national stores like The Limited, The Gap, and Abercrombie and Fitch. Market Square still had clothing stores that met the needs of adult local shoppers, though, including Talbots, which moved into Market Square in 1985 and was the first chain retailer to do so.

The biggest pressure on brick-and-mortar stores and catalogue companies came with the rise of online shopping. In 2000, about 4 percent of consumer dollars went to online transactions. It is estimated to be 35 percent of our spending today.

While clothes shopping continues to be a regular activity for us all, the evolution of Market Square continues. With new owners of century-old shops in Market Square, and new shops and restaurants moving to Lake Forest, there’s no sign of decline in our local shopping district, while malls are having to completely readapt to stay relevant to today’s shoppers.

To find out more about the history of Market Square, check out the exhibition at the History Center called A Window on Fashion: The Evolution Around Market Square. The exhibition runs through April 9. Hours and more information can be found at lflbhistory.org