Another day for a visit to the shopping centers and malls of the past. A true mid-century phenomenon, these places were hubs of activity and novelty, capturing the imagination whenever a visit was in order. Today’s gallery of vintage postcards takes us from the earlier shopping centers to the sprawling behemoths that became fixtures of major cities, with their acres of parking and promise of finding just about everything under one roof. About which, the opening image is at Chris-Town Shopping Center, in Phoenix, AZ.
Whittier Quad Shopping Mall, Whittier, CA.
Lloyd Center, Portland, OR.
The Plaza Shopping Center, Palm Springs, CA.
West Gate Shopping Center, Bradenton, FL.
South Yarmouth Shopping Plaza, South Yarmouth, MA.
Heights Plaza, Natrona Heights, PA.
Northtown Shopping Center, Spokane, WA.
Park Central, Phoenix, AZ.
Escondido Village Shopping Center, Escondido, CA.
Winter Park Mall, Winter Park, FL.
Eastland Mall, Detroit, MI.
Olean Center Mall, NY.
North Park Shopping Center, Davenport, IA.
The postal card of North Park Shopping center in Davenport seems to be more like early-to-mid 1970s with the presence in the top photo of a Ford Maverick and possibly a red Datsun 510 and at the lower photo, there seems to see a yellow green or yellow mustard with a black top vinyl 2-door 1971-72 Chevrolet Chevelle.
Indeed. The fairing on the motorcycle looks to be a mid 70’s Vetter Windjammer.
Also the modern JCPenney logo rather than the more stylized Penney’s one used in the ’50s-60s puts it well into the ’70s. It could be pasted in but if so, whoever did it did an uncommonly good job, getting the shadows under the letters in really well for working in physical pasting and an actual airbrush.
Yep.
It could be as early as 69′, there’s a mall in Chestnut Hill ( a suburb of Boston) that featured similar architecture! When it opened, it was considered revolutionary in style! It was in fact a preview of 1970’s commercial architecture complete with faux bricks and dark aluminum window frames!
The picture of Northtown in Spokane surprised me. I’ve lived here since 1990 and never realized Northtown was an open mall before it was a closed-in mall! The older open malls were basically Downtown with better parking.
It remind me of how Place Laurier, one of the first shopping centers in Quebec City, looked back in the 1960s.
https://www.quebecurbain.qc.ca/2008/03/28/voyage-dans-le-temps-place-laurier-vers-1965/
Also, here a picture found by luck of Centre d’Achats Sherbrooke now known as Promenades King in Sherbrooke along with some hisory in French. https://mhist.org/actualites/il-y-a-65-ans-un-premier-centre-dachats-a-sherbrooke/
It still exist but it go some facelifts and the part where the former Provigo supermarket and before that a Dominion supermarket was replaced by a little office building with a restaurant at the main floor. https://maps.app.goo.gl/2PAR34hXJMZ8WawHA
I prefer the closed in malls but these days I mostly shop online .
-Nate
The Eastland Mall postcard shows the mall heating plant’s chimney. I came across this picture of the mall as it was being demolished a few years ago where that chimney was the only thing left standing:
The Lloyd Center looks different from my memories in the 90s and 2000s and is poignant because it is about to be demolished.
I could still find value in an enclosed mega-mall and was vastly entertained by them at their height. Amazon is great but having a central local source was also a good thing. My Super WalMart is doing brisk business. I’m suspicious of the excuse that malls became obsolete. I think the owners realized how much money could be had by selling off the acreage. There are towns smaller than the parking lots of Chris-Town Shopping Center in Phoenix. They would make for a safe and comprehensive training site for autonomous cars and student drivers.
I lived near Chris-Town when it was being built. I remember the parking lots being full on weekends. It’s nothing like it used to be. My GF remarked that she wondered why it is still open.
A good # of malls fall into that category, The mostly, empty for years, one in hometown is going to be host to a “UPMC”, healthcare facility I hear.
LLoyd’s Center, Portland, (3rd photo), shows cars from late ’40’s to 1960.
I’m fixated on the ’54 Olds 98 2-dr. hardtop in white over orange.
From this angle, only a chrome stripe down the center of the trunk, distinguishes it from a ’55.
Lookin’ good at age 6, in the north.
The famous PNW healing rains.
The great colors of the cars in several of these photos are so much better than the mostly drab single colors of today’s vehicles.
The Whittier Quad had lower level parking that collapsed during the 1987 Whittier earthquake. It’s still in operation, though it looks different and has totally different stores.
I lived in Rosemead and worked for the USPS in Temple City. The epicenter was in Rosemead. It was quite a quake. When I was a kid Hinshaws was the big store there.
The Heights Plaza, Natrona Heights Pennsylvania is still there, but probably over 90% empty. When I was a little kid that place was on my mom’s shopping circut, we probably went there twice a month!
That Publix in Bradenton apparently hasn’t moved in well over 60 years.
The Escondido Village Mall is where I grew up in the 60’s-70’s and shopped and experienced the good old days of shopping malls. Great photo of the mall for I have not seen this picture. I miss the cars too from the 50’s-70’s.
The photo of the Whittier Quad in California is interesting in that the electrical power transformers are on poles in front of the stores. Having spent my entire life in the electrical construction and service industry that was the first thing I noticed. We wired a bunch of stand alone stores, strip malls, and enclosed malls through the years and the power lines always came in the back. One would think the merchants would have objected simply for aesthetic reasons.