Shoppers crowded the sidewalks, stores featured elegant interiors and elaborate window displays, and Robeson’s restaurant served the best pie in town. Look back at the glory days of downtown Champaign department stores, including Kuhn’s.

Host John Paul talks to Kyle Robeson, grandson of the founder of Robeson’s, and Gordon Tracy, general manager at Joseph Kuhn’s. Robeson describes how his grandfather started the store, the rooftop music and dances there during the big band era, and the fabulous cooks who worked at the store restaurant. “We had the best pies in town,” he says. Kyle Robeson said he never knew what was in the other downtown stores. His father wouldn’t let his son go inside the competitors’ businesses.

On May 27, Illinois Pioneers looks the days when downtown Champaign was filled with as many as 22 theaters.

Funding for Illinois Pioneers is made possible, in part, by The Noel Foundation, by donors to the Champaign 150th Anniversary Celebration Fund, and by the Office of Corporate Relations at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Illinois Pioneers
7:30 pm Thursday on WILL-TV

[Source: Illinois Public Media website; http://will.illinois.edu/site/headline/the-heydey-of-department-stores/]