PEORIA MAGAZINE March 2022

P E O R I A R E T R O

W hen the very last retailer decided to leave 124 SW Adams, Peoria mourned. In late 1975, Carson Pirie Scott & Co. – heir to Schipper & Block and Block & Kuhl at that address, where retail had reigned since 1905 – revealed it would close in three months. The timing of the December announcement pained countless Peorians with beloved memories of Christmas festivities at “The Big White Store.” The Peoria Journal Star went so far as to run a front-page obituary for the place. The lamentation began, “This is no ordinary store closing. It is more than just another setback for downtown. This is the death of a tradition.” Over the top? Not for generations of Peorians who knew the building – per the newspaper requiem – as “downtown’s greatest retail symbol,” the hub of a commercial swirl that had invigorated and connected the city for most of the 20th century. Now, after a decades-long fade of downtown, the arrival of OSF HealthCare’s headquarters has injected new life into that site. Perhaps BY PHI L LUCIANO PHOTOS COURTESY PEORIA HI STORICAL SOCI ETY COLLECT ION, BRADLEY UNIVERSI TY L I BRARY A PEORIA RETAIL ICON EVOLVES Now a health care headquarters, once ‘downtown’s greatest retail symbol’

50 MARCH 2022 PEORIA MAGAZINE