Westfield Old Orchard in Skokie celebrates 70 years as North Shore landmark

Westfield Old Orchard in Skokie celebrates 70 years as North Shore landmark

It was the morning of Monday, Oct. 22, 1956, when the doors of a new Marshall Field & Company, the crown jewel among Chicago’s retail royalty, opened for the first time in Skokie. The gleaming three-story, 310,000-square-foot department store would serve as the anchor tenant to what would soon become the metropolis of postwar suburban shopping in Chicago’s North Shore: Old Orchard Shopping Center.