300 South Broadway Avenue

Tudor Revival and Modern architectural styles

Plans to develop a shopping mall in a nine-block area in Urbana immediately south of Main Street began in 1959, with actual ground-breaking in 1963.  With Carson Pirie Scott and Company as the anchor store, the Lincoln Square Mall was built to offer automobile-driving customers a place to park and do the majority of their shopping in one area.  From the beginning, the mall’s design incorporated several existing structures, including the 1923 Joseph Royer designed, Urbana-Lincoln Hotel.  Lincoln Square featured 274,000 square feet of retail space plus an open light-filled, climate-controlled central area that was intended to draw shoppers inward–this has become a standard design feature of shopping malls today, but was a novel idea at the time.  It was the first downstate enclosed shopping mall and only the second in Illinois.  (The first enclosed shopping mall, Randhurst, was demolished.)  The architect, Victor Gruen, is nationally known for his mall designs, concepts and urban planning in the 1960s.  The Lincoln Square Mall and Urbana-Lincoln Hotel are considered to have national significance because of their close ties to community planning and development in downtown Urbana and their high degree of historical integrity–a rare feature in shopping malls.  The buildings were built by Almon W. Stoolman (hotel) and George Fuller (mall). 

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 8, 2006 for significance in  (#6000778).  Also known as Historic Lincoln Hotel and New Lincoln Square Village.