Alton Square opened in Alton, Illinois, in November 1978, and that first Christmas volunteers were wrapping gifts at banquet tables. Famous-Barr had lent the tables and taught them how to tie the bows.
A Cookie Factory was open from that first November. Olga's Kitchen came upstairs in 1980. Until 2015, walkers could come in at 6 a.m., before the stores opened.
The cookie shop lasted 46 years inside before it moved out in December 2024. Olga's closed in December 2025, the last restaurant under the roof.
The library, there since 1985, has a lease that ends in 2028, and it is looking at a building of its own. What else is still open in the mall around it?
Famous-Barr opened a month before the mall
On October 16, 1978, Famous-Barr opened a department store in Alton, Illinois, and for a month it traded on its own.
The St. Louis chain, part of May Department Stores, was the first piece of a new shopping center to open.
Alton Square itself opened on November 15, 1978, as an enclosed mall on two levels, built for $8 million, with JCPenney opening the same day and the corridors running between the two department stores.
Neither anchor rented its building from the mall.
Famous-Barr and JCPenney each owned their own stores, which stood apart from the small shops in between.
A Cookie Factory was open by that November.
The first Christmas also brought the Alton Community Service League, which set up a gift-wrapping station in the new mall.
Famous-Barr trained its volunteers in a two-day workshop on wrapping and tying bows, then lent them the banquet tables they worked at.
By 1981 the wrapping table was the league's yearly fundraiser.
A public library moved in upstairs
The upper level took tenants of more than one kind.
Olga's Kitchen opened on the second floor in 1980, and in 1985 the mall's owner donated 3,800 square feet up there to the Hayner Public Library, which opened a branch there and began lending books and holding programs in the mall.
Keeping up the shared halls, upstairs and down, came with a bill for the small shops.
S.G. Adams Printing & Stationery, an early tenant, had been paying $337 a month as its share of the common areas, and around February 1980 the charge went to $1,000.
The stationer refused to pay the higher amount, and the mall's owner took it to court.
The case grew into a fight over whether the shop could share the cost agreements other tenants had signed.
In 1987 the Illinois Appellate Court ruled that those agreements stayed confidential and sent the case back to the lower court.
Simon added a Sears wing
Simon bought Alton Square in February 1993 for $8.3 million, a little more than the mall had cost to build.
By June 1996 only about 59 percent of its space was occupied.
In 1997 Simon put up a Sears anchor building and renovated the mall around it.
The project added roughly 95,000 square feet and gave Alton Square a third department store.
By the end of 2003 occupancy had climbed to about 79 percent, and by 2005 Old Navy was listed among the mall's major tenants.
The south-end anchor changed its name in 2006. Federated Department Stores had bought May, and Famous-Barr became Macy's.
By the end of that year, occupancy had slipped to about 64 percent.
In August 2007 Simon sold the mall to Coyote Management. The deal covered the mall and its shops.
The Macy's and JCPenney buildings stayed out of it, in the hands of the stores.
The library moved into the Waldenbooks space
Two bookstores left Alton Square in 2008. B. Dalton closed on June 14.
Waldenbooks cut its stock to half price and closed on September 26, 2008.
The Hayner library's branch upstairs had already grown once, by about 2,200 square feet in 1997 and 1998.
In 2008 its board decided against expanding it again where it stood.
It chose the first floor instead: the Waldenbooks store, the space GNC had given up, and the storefronts beside them, joined into one branch.
On paper the library would grow from about 6,000 square feet to about 18,000.
The new branch opened in March 2009, and once it was in use it filled about 20,000 square feet.
It had no door of its own to the street, so anyone headed for the library walked in through the mall and down its corridors, past the shops on the way.
One piece of the old arrangement stayed upstairs: a large room the library kept for performances and programs.
A theater promised for summer 2010
In March 2009 Coyote and Premiere Cinema brought the city a plan for a stand-alone theater with 10 screens, to be built north of the Sears.
Their presentation to city officials closed on an opening date of summer 2010.
The plan leaned on public help: a 5-percent amusement tax, with up to $950,000 of it rebated to the developer, and a federal block-grant loan.
A council committee voted 6-0 to recommend it.
The theater did not open. By spring 2010 the mall was in receivership, and by that August Coyote was in default on $12.8 million.
In September 2010 Marquette, the lender behind Coyote's loan, took ownership of the mall.
Under the lender, the mall picked up public jobs.
In January 2011 the city named the food court a warming center for cold days, and in June 2012 it opened the same room as a cooling center for hot ones.
Sears closed in June 2012, and in 2013 Illinois Wholesale Furniture moved into the empty store.
In March 2014 artists began installing the Alton History Mural in the mall, a series of paintings of the city's people, places, and events, and the first finished panel copied an early map of the area.
Hull cut the benches and the early walks
Hull Property Group took over Alton Square in July 2015.
Ross opened that month in 28,000 square feet at the front of the mall, and inside, the new owner began clearing the halls.
The customer-service kiosk by the Ross entrance came out, along with the toddler strollers rented from it.
Wheelchairs, once kept by the doors, went to the security office next to the food court.
By late July nine benches were left on the lower level, and fewer upstairs.
The walkers lost their early start.
Under the previous owner they could come in as early as 6 a.m. From July 2015 their hours began at 9 a.m., and at 11 a.m. on Sundays.
The changes drew complaints, and they stayed.
In 2016 the empty storefronts upstairs were covered over with drywall and crown molding, with murals of local scenes and events planned for the new walls.
The furniture store left the old Sears that same year.
Macy's came down and Sears became a cinema
Macy's announced in January 2017 that its Alton store, with 54 workers, was one of 68 it would close.
Regular trading ended on March 12, 2017, and the big Macy's sign came off the building the next day.
By 2018 about 58 percent of the mall stood vacant.
Hull tied its rebuilding plan to public financing, and Alton's City Council approved a tax increment financing district for the mall in 2018, voting 6-1.
By April 2019 the 180,000-square-foot Macy's building was gone.
A new mall entrance stood at that end, second-floor tenants were moving down to the first, and work was under way to close the opening between the two levels.
The food court upstairs got a new use as well: in March 2019 OSF HealthCare announced plans to put a 12,000-square-foot rehab center there.
On June 21, 2019, after flooding forced the Steve Miller Band and Marty Stuart to find another stage, they played the mall's upper parking lot.
In January 2020 Hull announced an eight-screen NCG Cinema for the old Sears, possibly by summer 2020.
It opened on March 31, 2021, with more than 850 recliners, beer and wine, and $5 tickets on most Tuesdays.
Moviegoers came in from outside, because the cinema had no door into the mall.
The last restaurant left Alton Square
Walking got an organized form in July 2022, when OSF started a mall-walker program on a loop of about 0.2 mile, with distances logged at the rehab center or the library.
In December 2023 the Community Service League marked its 45th year of wrapping gifts at the mall, from a table on the lower level between the library and JCPenney.
The food went in the next two Decembers.
Cookie Factory closed its shop inside on December 24, 2024, after 46 years, and reopened in January 2025 at 192 Alton Square Mall Drive, outside the enclosed mall.
Olga's Kitchen closed on December 28, 2025. No restaurant is left inside the mall.
The only one on its directory is Santino's Steak and Pasta, in a separate building on the grounds.
Alton Square is open, and Hull Property Group owns it. Its directory lists 15 businesses and services.
JCPenney and Ross are the two department stores left, alongside the NCG Cinema in the old Sears, OSF Rehabilitation in the old food court, a post office, and the library.
The library is the tenant whose future is in play.
The Hayner district pays $20,000 a month plus utilities, handles repairs inside its space, and holds a lease that ends in 2028.
In June 2026 the mall's management showed the library several spaces and a plan to keep it at the property.
The district wanted about 3,400 square feet of connected public space, which those scattered rooms did not offer, and it is pursuing a building of its own.
The library came to Alton Square in 1985, given 3,800 square feet upstairs by the mall's owner.
It has outlasted the bookstores and two of the mall's three department stores.
Its evening programs still meet on the upper floor, in the performance room.
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