6 Places Missourians Used to Gather That Are Gone for Good
A landlord near Kansas City raised the rent on a longtime drive-in movie theater 350% in 2024, according to Kansas City’s public radio station KCUR.
The theater closed months later.
These are the places Missourians used to gather that are gone for good.
1. Crestwood Court
Crestwood Court once anchored shopping in the St. Louis suburb of Crestwood, with more than 100 stores under one roof.
A carousel stood near the Dillard’s entrance, and families rode it on trips that were about spending time together as much as spending money.
Teenagers cut through the food court and movie theaters many weekends just to be with friends, away from parents.
Dillard’s pulled out first, in 2007.
Macy’s followed in 2009 and Sears in 2012, the same reporting from St. Louis TV station (KSDK) found.
Shoppers drifted toward newer malls elsewhere in the region.
The anchor stores followed, one after another.
Foot traffic thinned out.
By its final years, more people walked laps through the empty concourses for exercise than came to shop.
Crestwood Court’s concourses closed for good in July 2013, capping a farewell gathering that spring where residents crowded the parking lot to say goodbye.
Demolition began in May 2016.
2. Arcade Lanes
Arcade Lanes had run as a University City bowling alley since the 1940s.
More than 300 perfect games had been bowled on its eight lanes over the decades.
A five-alarm fire tore through the building on the night of July 18, 2003.
Firefighters needed three hours and dozens of hands to get it under control.
Nobody was hurt.
The building was a total loss.
Arcade Lanes’ owner, a retired electrician, thought a wiring problem in a storeroom started it.
Fire officials said only that they would inspect the rubble to confirm the cause.
Arcade Lanes never reopened.
Owner Jim Lampson, 78 at the time, said he just wanted to keep the lanes’ history going for his family.
The eight lanes were never rebuilt.
3. Streetside Records
Streetside Records ran a Columbia store on Providence Road for 31 years before it closed in early 2013.
Regulars gave it nicknames over the years, including the Providence Avenue Playboys and Tuff Gals Club.
Longtime manager Kevin Walsh spent 26 years there, training close to fifteen generations of employees who came up through the store together.
Gone.
Nationally, compact disc (CD) sales fell from $13.36 billion in 2000 to $2.12 billion in 2013, an 84% drop, according to industry sales data.
Streetside Records’ Columbia store closed into that same collapse, one storefront in a chain that couldn’t outrun it.
Psst! How much do you know about why Missouri gathering spots like these shut down? See if you can spot the myths.
4. VFW Post 4240
Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) Post 4240 gave Monroe City veterans a hall to meet, swap stories, and plan the town’s flag ceremonies for generations.
In 2025, members voted to dissolve the post’s charter.
Gone for good.
Before closing its books, VFW Post 4240 gave away what was left in its treasury to local causes around Monroe City.
Its closure fits a wider pattern: VFW posts nationwide have been closing as their members age and fewer veterans join to replace them, Military.com has reported.
5. Jamestown Mall
Jamestown Mall opened in 1973 in north St. Louis County, anchored by Sears.
The mall grew to include a food court and a movie theater, and trips there stretched into full afternoons instead of quick errands.
St. Louis Public Radio talked to former visitors who remembered it as a safe place to spend time with friends, not just somewhere to shop.
Its anchors left one after another: Dillard’s in 2006, Sears in 2009, JCPenney in 2013, and finally Macy’s in 2014.
Nine years empty.
St. Louis Public Radio reported that demolition finally started in September 2023.
These Missouri Gathering Places Didn’t Stay Gone
Crestwood Court and Jamestown Mall are two Missouri gathering places that didn’t sit empty forever, even after they closed for good.
Crestwood Court’s site reopened as a Dierbergs grocery store in 2023, with new apartments built alongside it.
Jamestown Mall’s 142 acres are becoming green space, after St. Louis County and the state of Missouri each put in $6 million to finally tear the building down.
6. Twin Drive-In
Twin Drive-In had shown movies in Independence, near Kansas City, since 1965.
Twin Drive-In kept running through decades of multiplexes, home video, and streaming.
What finally closed Twin Drive-In was its landlord, who raised the rent by 350%.
B&B Theatres, the company that ran it, called the new rent impossible to work with and said the property owners likely wanted the land for something else.
Twin Drive-In’s last showing played on November 17, 2024.
Then the lot went dark.
The Kansas City region was left with a single drive-in still operating, just across the state line in Kansas.
Missouri-side moviegoers on that side of town had nowhere else nearby to go.
The One Drive-In Never Lost
The 66 Drive-In in Carthage has managed what Twin Drive-In couldn’t.
It opened on September 22, 1949, right along Route 66, three miles outside of town on its original nine-acre lot.
The screen went dark once, when the drive-in closed in 1985.
It came back.
Owners reopened the 66 Drive-In on April 18, 1998, with its original steel screen, concession stand, and ticket booth still standing.
The National Register of Historic Places listed the theater in 2003.
A wider screen went up after 1953 for Cinemascope films, and modern speaker poles eventually replaced the original speaker boxes.
An original playground still sits beneath the screen, a nod to the postwar baby boom the drive-in opened into.
The steel-and-neon entrance sign that welcomed drivers in 1949 still marks the way in.
Missouri has nine drive-in theaters left today, and fewer than 300 remain nationwide, KCUR has reported.
5 Things Missourians Know About Casey’s That the Rest of the Country Doesn’t
Missouri’s governor once drove from Jefferson City to Joplin just to cut a ribbon, and it wasn’t for a hospital or a factory.
It was for a warehouse full of pizza dough and gas station donuts, the kind of loyalty only Casey’s earns in this state.
5 Things Missourians Know About Casey’s That the Rest of the Country Doesn’t
9 Things Missourians Say That Baffle Everyone Else
A stranger orders dessert at a St. Louis custard stand, and the server flips it upside down without warning.
Regulars barely look up because that move is just one of the Missouri sayings and habits that confuse everybody else.
