CHICAGO - Driving around Brickyard Mall 

A few people asked in comments for going for a spin around Brickyard Mall.

Hoping to find video footage of the old Brickyard! I’ve managed to find a few old photos online but I know there’s got to be old footage out there.

Thanks for a view of the old mall area. I was a new young just out of high school lad in 1977 new to Chicago from a small city in the Northeast. I had relatives to stay with to get my start. The Brickyard ACTUAL MALL was brand new.... just not the prettiest most elaborate kind and had 2-levels with a 3rd actually being how it was on a elevation. My first job and part-time was nights facing shelves on the Osco side of the Jewel-Osco. I guess I should not be surprised the literal mall was leveled about 2003 and these separate buildings got built driving one to the other all with their own parking lot. Do I see it as some improvement to a enclosed mall that could get upgrades? Absolutely not as it all shows its age now anyway and a much MUCH Better RE-planned area could have happened. Perhaps more just perimeter retail with a interior of the 50-acres with a open park over a maze of parking lots and roads from one to another. Apparently before the original mall they actually had had a literal ski-slide before the mall was built as it could have had more of a entertainment feature back as the decades came and went. Glad the neighborhoods around it are still vibrant despite changes that were already declared on its way of ethnic changes that were spreading its way by the 80s. The Doom-loop predicted by some did not occur. I will never get the concept of separated big-box stores with some smaller ones between and you have to drive to the next... then to the next to do your shopping over a inclosed mall with anchors that still could have others along the streets also come. Each looking similar inside as any Walmart today. A original Mall of going inside walking to multiple retails stores and anchors in air-conditioning and heated in a dreary cold winters day .... was far superior during holidays all decked-out. Over these separated kinds that did not age that well. All it creates is you drive there, go in... buy your stuff and go home. Gone is the EXPERIENCE of going to a enclosed Mall as we knew it and ESCAPE a bit from just winter alone. This blog shows some scenes of the original mall with its old Mcdonald's floor tile pavers. Makes me wonder if the clay for them pavers was from that very location as a brickyard once? drloihjournal.blogspot.com/2023/06/the-brickyard-shopping-center-chicago-illinois.html

5:00 close call