8 Places Illinoisans Grew Up Going That Closed for Good

A marble plaque in a Rate Field parking lot marks the exact spot where Comiskey Park’s home plate once stood, according to a historical marker on the site.

That spot sits roughly 500 feet from home plate in the ballpark that replaced it.

That’s as close as any place on this list comes to still standing. The rest are gone.

These are the places Illinoisans grew up going that closed for good.

1. Riverview Park

Riverview Park spent 64 years as the amusement park generations of Chicago-area kids grew up visiting, a sprawling Roscoe Village midway of roller coasters, fun houses, and boat rides.

An estimated 200 million people rode through its gates before the doors shut for good.

Shareholders sold the land to a real estate investor in 1967, and the deal stayed secret until it was already done.

Nobody got a farewell ride.

Employees and regular visitors read about the closing in the newspaper the same morning as everyone else.

The park never reopened for even one more season.

The Bobs, the wooden coaster known for one of the tallest drops of any coaster of its era, is gone.

The land underneath it now holds a shopping center, a police station, and a Catholic high school.

2. Kiddieland

Kiddieland opened in 1929 and grew into Chicago’s oldest amusement park, a Melrose Park fixture built for kids too small for Riverview’s grown-up coasters.

A leasing dispute between two branches of the same family ended it: The family that owned the land refused to renew the lease in early 2009.

Nobody saw it coming.

The rides scattered everywhere.

Six Flags Great America bought the Little Dipper coaster, while other rides ended up in amusement parks in Michigan, Georgia, and New Jersey.

Crews demolished the park in 2010.

A Costco stands on the land today.

3. Comiskey Park

Comiskey Park hosted White Sox baseball on the same 35th Street lot for 80 years, ever since it opened in 1910 billing itself as the finest ballpark anywhere.

The ballpark played its final game on September 30, 1990, a 2-1 White Sox win over the Seattle Mariners.

Organist Nancy Faust closed it out with “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye.”

Then it was over.

Wreckers spent the summer of 1991 tearing the building down, working from the outfield corner toward the infield.

A new ballpark opened just across 35th Street in 1991, the stadium White Sox fans know today as Rate Field.

The original Comiskey Park is a parking lot today, with the old foul lines still painted on the pavement.

A marble marker there pinpoints home plate’s old spot, roughly 500 feet from where the White Sox play now.

4. Sears

Every mall people grew up going to had a Sears.

Sears grew out of the mail-order catalog business it started in Chicago in 1893, then opened its first Illinois retail store in the city in 1925.

For decades, shoppers found school clothes, tools, and Christmas gifts under one roof at nearly any Sears in the state.

The retreat took decades.

Sears closed its last Chicago store, the Six Corners location, in July 2018.

The chain’s last full-line Illinois department store, at Woodfield Mall in Schaumburg, closed on November 14, 2021.

No department store carrying the Sears name has reopened in Illinois since.

5. Dominick’s Finer Foods

Dominick’s Finer Foods filled the deli counter and produce aisle for generations of Chicago-area families, growing to 130 stores across the region by the late 1990s.

Safeway, which owned the chain by then, announced in October 2013 that it was leaving the Chicago market.

The end came fast.

Every remaining store was gone before the year was out.

A handful of the buildings reopened as Whole Foods locations, but the Dominick’s name and the company behind it disappeared for good.

6. Carson Pirie Scott

Carson Pirie Scott anchored malls and downtown Chicago storefronts for generations, the department store chain shoppers around the state grew up calling "Carson's."

Its parent company, Bon-Ton Stores, filed for bankruptcy in February 2018 and couldn't find a buyer willing to keep the stores open.

Liquidation firms won the auction instead.

The 160 employees at the North Riverside Park Mall location got the news in April 2018, and stores across Illinois closed within weeks of each other.

Only one ever came back.

New owners reopened the Evergreen Park store that November under the same Carson's name.

It closed again for good in October 2020.

7. Venture Stores

Venture Stores ran dozens of discount stores across the Chicago area and downstate Illinois, the kind of place families went for school clothes, toys, and everything in between.

The Missouri-based chain filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in January 1998, then that February announced it would close 20 stores, including its Rockford, Illinois location, to try to survive.

It didn't work.

Venture announced a full liquidation that April, and every remaining store, roughly 70 of them, was gone by mid-July 1998.

Kmart bought dozens of the empty buildings and turned many of them into Big Kmart stores that same year.

8. K's Merchandise

K's Merchandise grew out of a Decatur wholesaler into a catalog-showroom chain with stores in Springfield, Peoria, Bloomington, Danville, Carbondale, Quincy, Rockford, and Champaign.

Its reach covered downstate and central Illinois far beyond Chicago's suburbs.

A cash infusion from a Boston investment firm was supposed to save it in 2006.

The rebound never came.

Company president Bill Weinstein announced on October 3, 2006, that all 17 K's stores would close and liquidate.