CACrown ArchivesThe cinema collection
Menu
Research dossier · General Reference

Stratford Square Mall

shopping mall in Bloomingdale, Illinois

Cross-disciplinary reference desk with index cards, atlas, dictionary and catalogue
General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 5, 2026
Entity authorityQ7621987
Source-derived summary

Stratford Square Mall was a shopping mall that opened on March 9, 1981, in Bloomingdale, Illinois, a northwestern suburb of Chicago, Illinois, United States. Originally owned by Urban Retail Properties Co., the 1,300,000-square-foot (120,000 m2) indoor shopping mall was designed by RTKL Associates, and built by Graycor of Oakbrook Terrace, Illinois. Just before its closing, Stratford Square had six vacant anchor spaces that were last occupied by JCPenney, Carson Pirie Scott, Sears, Round One, Century Theatres, and Burlington. The former Marshall Field's/Macy's space was demolished in 2019 to make way for a new Woodman's Markets grocery store building. The mall was bought by Namdar Realty Group in 2019. On January 22, 2024, the Village of Bloomingdale purchased the mall and gave all of the remaining tenants in the mall a 90-day notice. The mall closed on April 21, 2024. Demolition started on the mall in October 2024 and was completed in 2025.

History

Ground was broken for Stratford Square Mall around mid to late 1979 and Stratford Square Mall officially opened on March 9, 1981 in response to the population and development boom then occurring in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. The mall was initially anchored by four major department stores—Marshall Field's, Carson Pirie Scott, Montgomery Ward, and Wieboldt's.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Stratford Square Mall” is shopping mall in Bloomingdale, Illinois. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Stratford, Square and Mall, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1981, 2019, 2024, 2025—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1981. For this dossier, Stratford, Square and Mall is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “shopping mall in Bloomingdale, Illinois” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7621987. Authority coordinates are 41.949, -88.115. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1981, 2019, 2024 and 2025.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Stratford Square Mall”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Stratford Square Mall primary sources, Stratford Square Mall archive and Stratford research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Stratford Square Mall”?
  2. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
  3. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Stratford Square Mall” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.