The Big Gap in Madison Street

I don't get down to the corner of Madison and Dearborn as much as I used to.  With the Washington Mutual on the corner closing and Wendy's no longer factoring so prominently in my diet, I'm bound to miss a few things as the months pass.

One of the things I missed was the disappearance of the Gap clothing store that used to be at 70 West Madison, in the Three First National Plaza building.  As you can see from the picture above -- it's gone.  If anyone knows when it vanished, post a comment below.

The Gap store was one of a group of interesting retail holdouts in the Loop -- stores that you normally find in a suburban mall or along Michigan Avenue that manage to eke out an existence from the office workers filtering out of the business district's skyscrapers.

I've always tried to patronize these shops to reward them for the effort they put into keeping the heart of the city alive.  Some of them are a little above my pay grade, and many cater to a gender other than my own, but I still appreciate what they contribute to Chicago's downtown districts at a time when most American cities have little to no business district retail.