Dixie Square Mall was an enclosed shopping mall in Harvey, Illinois, near 151st Street and Dixie Highway. Montgomery Ward, J.C. Penney, Woolworth, Walgreens, and Jewel were among the mall’s early tenants, with Turn Style joining in 1970. The mall lasted 12 years until closing in 1978. After closing (it was intended to be renovated), the mall was used for a scene in The Blues Brothers and subsequently abandoned. The mall also garnered notoriety due to an internet cult of urban exploration clubs committed to documenting its decline. Like other ghost malls, it closed due to excessive vacancies and low visitation. While other abandoned shopping malls were refurbished or demolished, Dixie Square became infamous for its dark past and excessive disrepair. Several plans to rebuild the mall were floated after its closure, but none materialized. For nearly 30 years, Dixie Square Mall deteriorated due to weather, vandalism, and a lack of maintenance funds. Another plan called for partial demolition of a structure, which was halted. The last destruction took place in May of 2012. Dixie Square, designed by architects Hornbach, Steenwyk, and Thrall, was erected on the site of the former Dixie Hi 9-hole golf course. After construction began in late 1964, Montgomery Ward was the first store to open on October 21, 1965. On August 31, 1966, Mel Torme and Carmelita Pope sealed and buried a time capsule on the property with 36 stores. The mall opened on November 10, 1966, with 50 stores open, three months after the final construction was completed. They were joined by the Art Van Damme Quintet, Homer and Jethro, Art Hodes and Sid Sakowicz, and Ned Locke from Bozo’s Circus. Toys R Us and Montgomery Ward were among the mall’s 64 retailers by 1968. Turn Style was added in 1970.
After a few years of relative peace, crime began to escalate in Harvey, a poor neighborhood 20 miles south of Chicago, and numerous big incidents occurred at or near the mall, including three murders in one year. A young woman was killed in a botched robbery near the mall in November 1972. On April 20, 1973, a robbery on the mall’s property resulted in another death. On July 17, 1973, three other juvenile girls strangled an adolescent girl who had been enticed away from the mall. It lost many stores between 1973 and 1976, including Montgomery Ward on October 4, 1976, and Turn Style in January 1978. In late July 1975, the mall renamed itself Dixie Mall and completed a refurbishment shortly thereafter, reopening on October 9, 1975. By 1978, the corporation had only twenty stores left. The mall closed in November 1978, and J. C. Penney closed in January 1979. The mall’s closing was attributed to thievery and staff theft, according to a 1978 Chicago Tribune investigation. Contractors were finally authorized to begin demolition in January 2012. After weeks of asbestos removal, builders began dismantling the mall on February 15th. After the destruction on May 17, 2012, the land was cleaned up and leveled for future construction. The prior location was mostly brownfields. an intermodal freight facility, according to a November 2015 publication. The former mall property was taken over by Harvey in 2016. Harvey was preparing the land to offer to developers in 2020, presenting it as a cold storage warehouse location.