The Rise and Fall of the American Mall
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- Опубликовано: 7 сен 2023
- Malls were, for a few decades, a center of US life- but in the 2000s a new term arose “dead malls.”
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Script by THG
#history #thehistoryguy #shoppingmall
What's puzzling to me is how Sears and Montgomery Ward couldn't read the writing on the wall and go back to their roots? They were catalog shopping businesses in the nineteenth century, and what is the internet if not a digital catalog?
Because a limited inventory store cannot compete with an unlimited inventory store, simple.
Sears lost money on its printed catalog for years before shutting it down in 1994. The Internet hadn't quite matured enough yet to get into that. By the time it did Amazon already had the market cornered.
If Sears had been forward thinking and embrace the internet we wouldn't have Amazon. Every two-bit town in America had a Sears catalog store. You went in you looked in the catalog you picked up what you wanted you paid for it and when it came in you picked it up. Even if you mail ordered something, it still came to your catalog store. So they basically had an infrastructure that covered the entire United States. That could have transitioned from print catalogs to the internet very easily. Amazon wouldn't have stood a chance.
Exactly correct!!! @@JimDean002
@@JimDean002 United States? Amazon is world-wide 😂🤣😂 Besides, nobody cares. Hindsight has always been 20/20. Were you born yesterday?
During the 1970s and 1980s when malls were in their heyday, it was such a nice experience just to go there. Especially around the holidays with the beautiful seasonal and especially Christmas displays. I'm really glad that I was able to be a part of that time and experience. I really do miss mall shopping, especially like they were back when they were doing well 😢
This is where all the high school kids used to go after school. It seems like the decline of the mall coincided with a crackdown of kids hanging out there.
@@sdrc92126 where I grew up, banning young people was precipitated by young gang members/shootings/drugs/violence causing problems for everyone else. It seems like everything went to hell in the mid 90s. It's a real shame. Some of the most fun I ever had was cruising at various malls around my area. It was fairly innocent fun, screwed up by a handful of a-holes. I don't know if kids even have anywhere to hang out these days.
@@sdrc92126Teenagers going there shopping and hanging out didn't cause this. Teenagers going there causing mini riots and chaos is what caused it.
@@Epic_C Yeah, it was the response. I remember cruising around the mall was pretty popular. I never did either, but it seems like both events coincided. And I can't recall any riots, but I probably wouldn't know if they did happen
Dixie Square Mall used in The Blues Brothers car chase scene was already abandoned in 80. Shuttered in 78. Hard to believe.
I recently returned from a month in Australia. Malls are everywhere there and are thriving. It was almost like going back in time walking into one. Just like the old American mall they have anchor stores, hundreds of small stores, food courts, movie theaters. And they were very crowded! It was like old times and it was fun being there.
What made the difference between the thriving Australian mall and the dying American mall?
@@karenryder6317 in Australia the major grocery chains (Woolworths/Coles/Aldi) operate as mall anchors as well as the major banks, post office etc. we ask so have fresh food halls with small retailers selling fruit and veg, meat, fish etc) so they cater for the everyday shopping.
True, and not so coincidentally, Westfield is an Australian company.
They are one of the biggest owners of malls and retail centres throughout the western world.
@@karenryder6317 Maybe higher population density and the lack of big box stores like Walmart, as well as a better economy.
I wonder if they're hot climate also makes indoor air conditioned malls a more attractive option. Indoor malls are also incredibly popular in any affluent Arab country for the same reason.
As a teen in the 80’s I spent tons of time at our local mall and miss it. So much to do in one place. Shop, eat, arcade, movies, roller skate.
I remember when "the older people" hated malls around 1985 and 1995, they missed the "good ol' days" when all the business was in the downtown district by mom and pop shops. Malls were seen as too corporate and soulless. Fast forward to 2023, and suddenly now malls are MISSED. Crazy!!
@@John-ct9zs As someone who grew up going to the mall often as a kid, I can see where those "older people" were coming from. Downtown districts are better for communities, you didn't always have to drive there, and could often walk. You could also support small businesses, and keep said towns economy going. Malls did ruin that in many ways. I think we should go back to downtown districts again.
The inner city 'youths' took over.
Shopping on the internet sure did not help things either for malls or any brick and mortar stores.
@@jcshavesI used to love hanging out the mall in my high school days in the mid 90's.
You could find just about anyone of your friends on a Friday night, and there was a whole new world of girls from surrounding towns we didn't know "yet"😅.
Food, fun, people, beeper chains and accessories. Such great memories.
It really should have been mentioned that big malls on the outskirts of town combined with big box stores pretty much killed the Main Street downtown shopping district of most small towns.
That is a fair point, and somewhat ironic given what is happening to malls today.
@@TheHistoryGuyChannel , I personally am not nor have I ever been a fan of shopping malls and I have always avoided them like the plague. Part of me wants to revel in all these empty malls and point to them as monuments to conspicuous consumption and capitalistic excess, but now we have thousands of these empty "white elephant" buildings that aren't easily converted to other use and would be expensive to do so, not to mention the cost of heating, cooling and lighting them, or modernizing them so that they don't require as much power to run. Malls don't adapt themselves easily to other uses and as such they are a bit of a white elephant. They served their purpose for investors and now that the investors don't want them anymore they become deteriorating eyesores. They no longer generate any propert tax or sales tax revenue for the town, city or county and they might actually end up draining tax revenue if they become abandoned, and the owners stop paying taxes or perhaps even declare bankruptcy, in which case the building may actually revert to the local government and becomes their headache. The closest modest cities to my own small town are dotted with dozens of derelict or abandoned retail and industrial properties; And the closest mall to me which is quite modest in size ide is only about half full of retail outlets. But if you drive 10 minutes away the Walmart parking lot is full.....
@@TheHistoryGuyChannelIt's funny how things sometimes circle back though. My small town of 30K, has developed the downtown area.
Small shops, restaurant s, coffee shops, and even a brewery have filled previously vacant buildings. Very few vacancies to be found.
It seems that people are looking for a taste of how it used to be.
City tax greed was a major factor. Cities increased taxes to such a high degree that the burden of taxes and gangs and internet shopping did them in. Get rid of taxes and gangs and they would be fine,
I agree, it did. I listen to my parents talk about going downtown to shop and how they enjoyed it when they were children. I had some of that same experience but I grew up in the 70’s and 80’s so the mall is where we spent a lot of our time. The difference today is there is nowhere to go, everybody is shopping on line, there is NO social interaction which is a major problem. Back then it just switched from one location to another, now it’s switching from a location to a “virtual” place.
I'm working on a time machine to take me back to the 80's and 90's, when my hair was still dark and things at Sharper Image and Brookstone still amazed me. The malls are one of my fond memories, especially at Christmas. Amazon just isn't the same as looking for that special thing and coming across things that I hadn't seen before. The internet, for all its wonders, just made things too easy and took away the magic of discovering things in person.
Same can be said for the library. And museums
The internet didn't kill the malls as most retailers in malls gave had a website selling to you for 24+ years, they are and was the internet.
It's the income deficiency across the population that killed them!
@@American-Motors-Corporation Its well known how online marketplaces had a large hand in destroying local small businesses. Couple that with social media, and smartphones, eliminating the necessity for in person meeting places for young people. They no longer needed to congregate in the mall, they could just keep in touch with the phone. That, is what killed the malls.
Income deficiency.... thats retarded.
@@ckmoore101 I do agree the young folks stopped hanging out a bunch (at the mall).
However that's the fault of the mall.
They ran off their core customer.
Below are the real reasons they're dead!
nope, it has been wildly said that that's the case, but it's bullshit. Yeah mom and pop has been in on it the internet for over 20 years as well. Some more than others. It's literally an income deficiency across the population as root cause. That's what the system is trying to cover up by explaining it away with blaming the internet.
Sears, Penny's, Macy's and Kohl's Lazarus when they was around. All had websites with the capability of shipping directly to you or for pick up in store since the mid to late 90's.
In fact the store catalog was moved to the internet format it's literally the same thing.
Tell ya what, here's the hard prof,
The stores I had mentioned above all had catalogs at one time. While they had actual retail stores. However there was other companies that was nothing but catalog stores with zero physical locations back in the day...
So hummm why was there zero whining and balling from those very retails during the great depression about their catalog based only competitors?
I looked didn't find one single article from that time, not one. And I've been researching this topic for over a decade especially since the lie started blaming the internet!
Blaming the internet is for stupid people who know zero about business, the reason why is simply because those very retailers are the internet the money they collect from online sales still goes into the same coffers.
Another point to debunk this crap is simply,
It's only 8-10% of all retail sales that are online, the other 90+% of all retail sales are happening in the brick and mortar environment.
So why the down turn?
The income deficiency across the population was getting bad before 08 post 08 it's gotten worse.
You see, the world we live in is simply either you have the money or you don't.
So if you don't have the 10, 20, 35 or 80 bucks perhaps the 150 to 400 bucks to hand to the likes of a physical retailer then what the hell makes anyone think that you'd have any of those or in between dollar denominations to give to the likes of a retailers online arm or to Amazon?
So no it's an over stated lie that's well known it's not the truth, it was the official story of last decade to blame the internet, it was an excuse drummed up to explain away the downturn to stupid people!
Google it search for Jeff bezos, may 2016 interview even in there he admits online sales are only 8-10% of all retail sales this why he wanted to muscle in on brick and mortar.
If course since then plans have changed simply due to the downturn of the economy yes but the income deficiency has become too great!
That doesn't mean that Jeff won't try at some point to get back into the brick and mortar game, he's most likely waiting on commercial real estate prices to fall.
That's been the great strategy among most of us business types especially on the small business front.
The internet wasn't enough to have actually killed these places nor the retailers that occupied them.
In further reasons why the mall is dead and the internet is not to blame you must understand why there was so many malls to start with.
Simply put, it's because malls in decades past was a great place for the wealthy to hide money. It was a tax shelter.
Well it being a tax shelter became less and less over the years, until it wasn't one.
Couple that with neglect of the structures and high rent. Yep it's over!
The money left it's that simple.
Then another major reason for the downfall was most of the retailers themselves.
Welp they made bad financial decisions, Sears, Penny's Macy's and Kohl's Lazarus... yeah go back and look at their balance sheets. You'll notice in and around 2005 they all took on mass amounts of debt and kept doing so. They drove themselves into the ditch. It was not the internet's fault!!
@@ckmoore101as an observer I don't think that that is retarded internet was a reason but income deficiency all across North America with the declining middle class is part of the reason why malls have died no more middle-class anymore you are stop either rich or poor
I've been lamenting for years over the demise of the malls. They were great and didn't deserve to fall out of favor.
It sucks but times change. Technology has changed everything. Movie theaters are dead too….we are going from a more social, outward society to a more antisocial, stay at home society. It’s unfortunate
To quote Clint Eastwood in "Unforgiven" -- "Deserves got nothin' to do with it."
I feel like malls became victims of their own success. Leasing a storefront in a mall became so expensive that the only shops still in today's malls are all too generic and overpriced. The same chains, a rather bland variety. Still a good place to buy new clothes, but very little else.
@lemonyx4936 The internet also added to the downfall of malls. As a teenager, I would go to the mall to shop and hang out with friends. Online shopping and social media has made it where you can do that from home.
Y'all are just assuming that what happens in America also happens in the rest of the world, which isn't the case.
Malls in Asia and Europe are still alive and thriving despite the prevalence of Netflix and Online shopping. You can literally look at European and Asian malls on RUclips and compare to how US is doing their malls.
The American malls are dying, but not the concept of malls as a whole.
The history guy holding no punches at the beginning. That was so incredibly sweet so I really wanted to cry.
Growing up in the upper midwest, the best thing about malls was that they were warm and filled with tropical plants. That's great when it's freezing and snowy outside. The depressing thing for me was that we grew up poor, so all the stores were a constant reminder of all the things I couldn't afford, but everyone else seemed to be able to.
Out here in sweltering California, it's the exact opposite. We go to malls to get out of the heat. It is always so bizarre to me to hear so many people talking about being cold, because that is a feeling I rarely get to experience.
@@LividImp, People who live in the suburbs don't necessarily need to go to the mall on the edge of suburbia to get temporarily cooled-off, because if you live in the suburbs you probably have air conditioning in your house already. It's the poor people who live in inner cities who are less likely to have air conditioning at home and would greatly benefit from an air conditioned mall nearby, except that the malls are rarely if ever built anywhere that's easy to get to from the inner city.
Funny. Growing up in Florida, the best thing about the mall was that, unlike my HS, it was air-conditioned and delightfully cool.
@@goodun2974 1. By your logic then that means people in the north are only going to malls because they have no heat at home. Give that two seconds of thought. Not only is that ridiculous, but even if it was true I guarantee you there are _far_ more people without air conditioning in the south, than there are people without heat in the north. But the bottom line is that we are not even talking about subsistence shelter here, we are talking about leisure.
2. If you think poor folks still live in the inner city and not in the suburbs, then you must have got buried in ice about a quarter century ago and just now got thawed out. Malls aren't the only thing that's changed in the last few decades. Most cities are so unaffordable that even people that want to live there can't. Any poor folk that could get out, moved out to the suburbs, or more frequently, the exurbs. The blighted inner city is a concept that itself is decaying.
choose your parents wisely
As a kid, going to the mall with my parents was a huge treat. Wonderful memories, but things change…what Walmart didn’t kill, Amazon did.
I’d agree with the caveat that malls accelerated their own deaths by filling their central corridors with stupid kiosks.
Malls were the evil small business killer that Amazon is now. It's always something.
When we have personal home replicators, we're going to feel nostalgic about Amazon.
@@theobserver9131 Never thought of malls as being small business killers, but maybe they were. Amazon, not so much.
Videos are great but could you turn up your story volume? The music seems louder than the story on this one.
A friend of mine who used to work for a Mall management company told me that one of their biggest problems was what they were charging for rent and maintenance of the mall. She said they lost a lot of stores to outside Shopping plazas/malls because of the cheaper rent and maintenance fees. Plus the Movie theater that was in the mall built their own building and moved out into a mega theater instead of a small 5 screen theater. Then Covid hit a few years later and that took care of the rest.
Just commented similarly. Greed from landlords has been a huge problem. Plus as malls aged, many landlords couldn’t be bothered to spend money upgrading. In my area, the mall that is still bright, airy, and looks nice is thriving. The older, one story, dumpy mall, went out of business & is getting redeveloped into something else.
You are spot-on about the rent. My cousin she worked in a shoe store in the early 2000s and said they paid $6,000 a month for rent... And thinking about it now that store wasn't that big.
I am 45. I recently moved to Albania where online shopping is not nearly as common as in America. Well, I recently went to a Mall here, a decent sized one, and very similar to an American mall. The main difference, it was busy and I believe every store space was taken. I felt like I went back in time to when our malls were a busy shopping and social hub, just with modern clothing and goods. It was a very interesting. A good number of the malls from my youth are now defunct. I had to move to Albania to have a similar mall experience to what I had so many years ago.
I just made a similar comment about that when I moved to Italy last year. I think it’s a cultural thing.
Here, when you go shopping, no matter where, there are people there to help you, just like there used to be in America, before the malls.
@@kevinbuja8105 That's cool. How do you like Italy. We are planning to move there in a year or two, God willing.
Why in heck does an American move to Albania?
@@alexmuenster2102 Well, we are missionaries here, simply Christian. We only plan to be here for a short time. Tourist visa is 1 year for Americans. Even though the US is rich and has plentiful jobs, it has gone mad. No one is pushing LGBT agenda on our children, no one is talking about pronouns, or sex changes for children. No Drag queen story hour. Everyone here knows what a woman is. It's poorer, but more sane in general . Albania definitely has its problems, and some of them quite large, but not bad to live here at all. Cost of living is very low. Food is good. People in general are very friendly. Very easy to make new friends here. Many benefits. I love America tremendously but we have become an absolute laughing stock. It's really sad.
Totally excellent, wishing you blessings. @@edwardcarlton
Luckily my local mall has been able to keep with the times and is still thriving. But man, Sears being gone hurts my heart. What could have been.
Terrible mismanagement. Too bad. People literally ordered homes from them and they were delivered by rail.
@@MichelleCWeberit was worse than that, I remember pitching “selling over the Internet” to them around 2000/2001, they were in a perfect position to do it. “Nobody will ever want to not go to a store, who wants to order from the air”.
This is so correct. Sears had infrastructure and experience with mail order that would have made them the dominant online retailer, and they threw it away at the worst time.
They were *this* close to being Amazon; they just had to weather a few years between the catalogs and online shopping. We used to joke about "Sears sucker suits," but that didn't stop us from buying Craftsman and other brands there . . .
The neighboring town desperately wanted a mall. Once they got one, it failed, in part because it lacked an "anchor store" like Sears.
In my area thugs in training ruined the Mall experience for retail shoppers. I used to go for the food court but after having my car broke into I never went back.
@@seanseoltoir old skool racist.
@@mikeh9956 is being a violent pest intrinsic to their race?
That's exactly what happened to two malls in my area.
@@Nudhulits obligatory
There were incidents at some of the malls near me where people were being attacked, mugged, even raped by assailants hiding under parked cars.
Pretty sad to see. I loved hanging out at malls as a teenager. What killed malls for me was the decline of physical media. We would normally hit the music, movie, or game stores. There are 2 malls by me and every store inside is pretty much just clothes now.... pretty boring. There's no reason for me to go anymore.
Malls were a great place to go when you had nothing to do, no matter your age. They were warm or cold depending on the season and if you just walked around looking at things you couldnt justify buying time passed until you had to go to wherever you had to be.
As a teenager of the 80's, the mall was a quintessential part of our existence... think of Fast Times at Ridgemont High set in the Midwest, and that was our life. It was where everyone would meet up on a Friday afternoon, grab a bite, maybe catch the latest movie, and plan the evening's escapades. The Christmas decorations and shopping crowds were a thing to behold, especially in the early 90's with the boom of the electronics sector. I've long since moved away, but it was sad to see our hangout abandoned & razed over 15 years ago.
Yes because Hollywood told everyone to hangout at the mall until everyone realized there was nothing to do and it was stupid. Of course the 90's came and the old people bitched so then the malks ran off the core customer which was the teenagers.
Bye bye malls!
I always thought Malls would make good Senior Centers or Nursing Homes. Following the Scandinavian model of Dementia Villages, abandoned Malls would make excellent remodeled places because the entrances can be controlled and there are already food prep areas and walking area built and multiple floors and wings.
What the hell?
A dementia village sounds like a bad horror Movie of Soulless people walking around.
@@shawnmason5290 It is actually a very amazing way to care for the elderly with dementia. They are surrounded with the familiar things of their pre-dementia life and can walk around freely. And they aren't souless, they are just forgetting. They are still people who deserve to be loved, and cared for, and treated with dignity.
I agree. Given their size & protection from the elements, they seem a very logical community location, as our population skews older.
It is a great idea, but will likely never work in the US outside a few examples near the largest US cities or near very wealthy enclaves. They are simply too expensive given that they tend to cost even more than tuition at Harvard at around or more than $60,000 a year per person.
Great idea but many malls have no windows. Seniors would probably like to look outside
I've always enjoyed going to the mall as a child. To look through every boutique, supermarket, toy store, jewellery store, gift shop, bookstore, etc. was always a pleasure because of all the variety. If anything, social media should be used to help keep the tradition of going to the mall alive.
It’s quite amazing to listen to the history guy talk about his experience with the mall and his family and then he opens up the throttle on the length and history of the mall. Nice job 👍
I went to the Flagstaff Mall about 6 years ago when I visited my sister. It was not impressive.
We avoid shopping in malls here in Australia, reason , the rent paid by the shops is so high that prices for goods are almost always more expensive than elsewhere.
I live near Cincinnati in the U.S. We spent a lot of time hanging out at the mall when I was a teenager, but we couldn’t afford to buy anything. The prices were largely inflated over here as well compared to the alternatives. It was a fun place to visit…but not a worthwhile place to spend money. The death of so many malls doesn’t surprise me at all.
I also don’t think Malls ever became the substitute Town Centres in Australia that they seem to have been for a while in the US. Shopping streets, pedestrian plazas and urban parks are places to hang out and shop here.
The other key difference in Australia is malls have supermarkets among their anchor tenants, banks, post office etc as well as the discount chains Kmart, Big W, and Target making it the place in the suburbs for everyday shopping and not just anchored by department stores.
That's happened here in the US already, but largely as a result of mail owners trying to make up for lost revenue when the bigger name stores either close or move elsewhere. Given a choice between a dedicated location owned by your own company, or a place where a percentage of your profits goes to a landlord, the big stores moved out. They didn't need walk-by traffic to stay in business.
One thing that has been glossed over is the rising danger of going to the mall. Of the seven malls I frequented while living on the edge of Chicago in the same home, each one died when unaccompanied youths spurred gangs to take over and confront non gang members from enjoying the shopping mall experience.
Well, to be honest, what you are not doing, you said it yourself. Chicago. Leftist politics breed crime and economic decline. Pure and simple.
Let's see if I can name them. Lincoln Mall, River Oaks Mall, Orland Mall, Chicago Ridge Mall, Yorktown Mall, Southlake Mall. Louis Joliet?
@@ughettapbacon you forgot Ford City and the evergreen plaza
Even Oak Brook Mall is suffering from crime.
@@acmhfmggrulol no kidding. I live in the ATL, home of 4 of the deadliest cities in America. Even in #7, where Stonecrest exists, there ain’t no BS like that lmao
Bunch of gang bangers collectively stopping non-gang banging people from shopping? In SEVEN malls? Ya I dunno bout that, chief. Walk around scared of the other, you’re gonna be scared your whole life. And btw just go ahead and say “black teens” or whatever jfc lol
I remember my parents deciding to take us to Southdale when it opened. I was 6, and my sister was 4. We were walking around with our mouths hanging open! And the huge bird cage was fabulous! We had a wonderful time there.
Minnesota can have some truly fierce winters and blistering summers. The malls were a blessing! I'm one of those strange people who likes to see and possibly feel the product I want to buy. Returning things to Amazon and getting credit for it is a pain in the petoot! Very iffy!
I’ve been to Southdale. Loved it!
@@mikeymutual5489Minnesota summers get into the 100’s, too.
@@QueenOfTheNorth65 Wow! I haven't been in years. The last time I was there I visited Barnes and Nobel. I bought a pocket copy of Gibran's "The Prophet." Still have it!
Fascinating summary. I moved to Zanesville in 2012, and the handwriting already was on the wall, when Sears closed not long after in our mall. Nonetheless, I was shocked when, a few years later, I made a rare trip out for shopping (well, there you have it) and was shocked to find what felt like a ghost town. Our mall creaks along still, with Penny's (bless them!) and a few old staples, plus places like TJMaxx, finding cheaper space than their own building. I don't need all that much stuff any more, and what I want is pretty esoteric (clergy shirts and fountain pens), but still, when I buy clothes, I like to feel and smell them, and see them with my own eyes. And, I am sorry to see what seems the raging agoraphobia of our times.
The aging of the Boomer generation is another
factor in the decline of malls. (How many things
can you buy and stuff into a house?)
Yes! At age 74 I’m trying to give away as much as possible and not buy anymore than is absolutely necessary. Mostly I now buy only birthday and Christmas presents.
The Arcade Cleveland was opened in 1890 and was a fully enclosed modern mall. Still exists today, one of the most beautiful Victorian buildings as you have ever seen.
The first US arcade is the Westminster Arcade in Providence, opened 1828
OUR CLOSEST MALL WAS AT OLATHE KS, OPENING IN THE EARLY 1980s
THE PLACE NEVER HAD MORE THAN ABOUT 65 % OCCUPANCY!
IN THE MID 1990s IT STARTED LOOSING MORE STORES , SINKING TO MAYBE 25 % OCCUPANCY BEFORE 2000.
AFTER SITTING EMPTY ,
IT WAS KNOCKED DOWN BY 2016!
IN THE KANSAS CITY SUBURBAN AREAS THERE WERE ALSO SEVERAL MORE MALLS LOST AS WELL!
I will 40th this statement haha, best arcade still around, live in OH as well
Unfortunately they still cannot find a good use for it and this fact is so very depressing.
I just stayed at the Hyatt there. It is very nice
I like many witnessed the rise and fall of mall culture within my lifetime. In the 70's and 80's they were an important part of society. Back then nobody would have suspected that they would die off so rapidly.
When I was stationed at Great Lakes, IL, we'd go to a nearby Mall to get off base and all the same reasons anyone would go. It was a smaller Mall than others, but it had enough variety to be worth a periodic visit back from 1988 - 1990.
The happenstances of duty had me return to Great Lakes perhaps 12 years later, and I looked forward to taking the wife there to show her a favored destination in my earliest days in the Navy. It was significant enough that I could recall exactly how to get there, even after all that time had passed. I was never a 'Mall Rat' per se, but used to enjoy going to them well enough when they used to be a destination in itself.
I was so disappointed and sad to see the Mall closed and in an obvious state of neglect, from the grounds to the building. I'd wanted to share this more than I had thought. That happy place against the demands of arduous duties with my best buddy from the base and maybe another sailor or two that wanted to tag along.
My heart just sank when we first pulled into that parking lot, empty with weeds growing from the cracks in the pavement. It had always respectably busy back then. Malls seemed foundational structures that seemed the closest to permanent fixtures, the closest modern equivalent to the grand old courthouses & Post Offices were built, as if they'd be there forever - and there is was, abandoned & neglected, now a asterisk to a footnote.
I drove around a but, perplexed and looking for any signs of life or activity. Maybe some remnant or portion survived? No. It was dead. I suppose it marked the end of an era with a revisit cruelly denied of what was in my world back as a young sailor, a landmark in its own right - at least it was for me.
Oh no, Gurney mall closed ?😢
I miss the malls of the 80's. We would always start with a stop at See's Candies for a piece of chocolate, then take a walk through the pet store to gush upon the kittens and puppies. After that it was a slow walk around both floor loops. There were stores that catered to every member of the family and they had something for every income level. After all the walking it was on to the food court for some food not generally available outside of the mall at any restaurant. Every Christmas meant a trip to the mall to shop for presents and go to see Santa Claus. When I was a teen it was a bicycling destination to hit up the arcade, shop for music and books, then grab a quick bite before riding home. The biggest failing of malls was the focus entirely on teen girls & women with high-end clothing brands and countless beauty product stores. As a male there was nothing of interest and even the food court became nothing but commercial fast food restaurants. Covid killed my local mall entirely. The inside has a handful of resellers with marked up prices, no better than an expensive flea market. No food court, no anchor department stores, and no Santa Claus.
Funny you mention See's. I took a walk around one of the malls in Orange, CA recently. See's was one of the only original stores left.
Anchor department stores Broadway, JC Penney, & Sears gone. (Well, Broadway was replaced by Walmart long ago.)
All bookstores gone.
All men's clothing stores gone.
All electronic stores (other than the relevant part of Walmart) gone.
There used to be a pet store, but I don't even remember what that was last there.
The Malls in the US became meeting places that were comfortable to be in year round. I worked in malls for a number of years
The worst thing about malls today are those bloody kiosks and the agressive salesjerks associated with them. That's the main reason I rarely go, not just because of online retail.
One of them legit GRABBED ME BY THE HAND when I walked by to get my attention. Like WTF? Grabbing people is never socially acceptable.
@@RapeARUclipsCensor Yes! He grabbed my hand and then spent a good 5 minutes trying to sell me some Israeli Sea Salt......not the kind of thing I would ever buy. I told him maybe tomorrow and he's like "You aren't coming back are you!". This was a high end mall too
I will say that is my only con with modern mall shopping. I get that since there is much less foot traffic, sales associates have much more pressure to make a sale. Still, I miss the social experience and try to hang on to it, saddened each time I go...
Spencer’s gifts rocked. Spent hrs looking at posters
I was taken aback with "frostbite in Arizona." When I think of Arizona, I think of 100-degree temperatures.
Flagstaff is 7,000 feet above sea level, so it gets lots of snow in the winter.
Denver Colorado is only 5,000 above sl.
Personally, I believe the decline started in 1980, when 2 assailants, clad in black, drove a former police cruiser through a Chicago mall, causing numerous accidents for the local police in pursuit. Many stores were destroyed in the incident.
😂 pursued by a bazooka carrying princess!
"This mall has everytghing".
Were they on a mission from God?
The new Oldsmobiles are in early this year!
But they were puttin' da Band back together!
So sad. It was the ONLY place you could shop all day and enjoy yourself. Especially during Holidays. EVERYONE spent time at the mall. It was a gathering place for friends, to go have lunch, or to just have a great day. So sorry to see this happen.
True, it was part of pop culture when I was growing up. Movies like "Mallrats" say it all, though some 14 years before that "Blues Brothers" served as kind of a premonition of what would happen, with Dixie Square Mall already being closed and restructured for the car chase scene.
Unlike the more modern town center concept, the enclosed mall was a place where you could be completely immune from the elements. During their heyday, parents usually felt safe dropping off their teenagers to hang out with friends, and hours could be spent walking store-to-store, in the ubiquitous arcade, or simply sitting in front of the fountain chatting it up. Come lunchtime, you'd head to the food court for some fast food, or maybe even the Ruby Tuesday or TGIF. After lunch, maybe go see the latest movie at the theater before meeting your parents at a predetermined time and place or pulling out a quarter and calling them on the payphone.
@@anonymousm9113, Years after The Blues Brothers movie abandoned mall's figured prominently in the TV shows Stranger Things and The Last of Us.
When I was in grade school, my parent's used to give me $5 and drop me off in the morning and tell me where to be to get picked up in the afternoon. I guess things were safer then I remember trying to figure out how to buy tickets for the first time to see _Smokey and the Bandit_
You can blame online shopping for that! Sadly people prefer to lay on their couch and order online than go for a wonder and support the local stores.
The thing about the holidays is IMPORTANT. I always feel so much less holiday spirit each year for the big ones like Halloween and Christmas. Aside from TV channels going all-out with bumpers and theming, malls were the other big push of holiday decorations, festivities, and celebrations! The cartoon and kids tv channels were the only big holiday vibe rivals! With both these monumental institutions dying or dead, the holidays feel empty. And it’s certainly for a lack of trying because public spaces used to be the BIGGEST for holidays. But now, especially post-lockdown, a lot of people and places struggle to put up big holiday cheer and celebration at the scale I was used to as a kid. It IS palpable how much has declined!
One local dead mall in my area has turned a large part of its area as a huge farmer’s market and another large area as an indoor temperature controlled storage area. They’re also working on an indoor skateboarding area. Gotta change with the times!
I was born in 1961 and witnessed the first malls and they were really something. Six movie screens, food courts and young people congregated without causing any trouble. Malls were on their last legs and then came Covid and seriously Amazon shopping.
I lived close to Southdale from about 1956 to 1963. Even though I am 68 I have fond memories of the escalators, fish ponds, large bird cage, mini zoo in basement and animal row markers in parking lots. It was a magical place at Christmas as well. Most malls are a shadow of their heights or closed altogether. Thanks for your informative video on malls in America!
I remember the animal row markers! Thank you for bringing up that memory. Southdale. Rosedale. Such great memories.
I traveled the USA extensively for work, and I noticed the very homogeneous nature of shopping malls. The same stores and the same goods were pretty much everywhere. Back in the 1990s I hypothesized that if you took a typical American, blindfolded them, spun them around three times, and dropped them inside a randomly selected suburban shopping mall anywhere in the country, they would have one chance in fifty of correctly knowing which state they were in.
You've obviously never been to Mississippi.
You can say the same about any random 5 mile stretch of suburban Interstate highway.
well played
You don't necessarily have to drop them in any shopping mall. You could drop them in the middle of anywhere. Most Americans don't know their own geography if their life depended on it. It's worse the younger generations.
I was a teenager during the golden age of video arcades, and my usual hangout at the local mall was the arcade next door to the movie theater. I would spend about a couple of hours and about 5-10 dollars on games before going to see a movie.
I miss malls often for both the social and indoor walking space. I grew up not far from Phoenix's PV Mall and a trip with the neighbors to MetroCenter was always a treat. They had holiday events, and in the summers, a bunch of my friends would get together, catch a daytime matinee, hang out at the food court, then wander the mall until we had to go home. A lot of that disappeared ages ago now.
I am 20 years my wife's senior (which is perhaps another subject for the History Guy to visit) however, my wife and I still love visiting the malls.
"Hey kids...there are real things to see and touch, and real people to converse with! No cel phones required."
And guess what, yer wife's been cheating on you and you never found out 😂
@@ChatGPT1111 Maybe poisoning me too...but the food's still good!
The mall was a day out for the family when I was a kid in the 70s. At that time, the nearest mall was a 45 minute drive away. We all went. Older children were told to rendezvous with parents at a given time and were set free. Usually we ate something there. We went maybe 2 times a year. One of those was before Christmas. It started the whole holiday break from school and we looked forward to it at the end of summer. Now people don't etc their kids wander like that. It's a bygone era.
Malls were their own worst enemies adding to their fall. Malls did not just charge rent to the stores, but also took a percentage of sales. Making them very expensive, one of my family members left the mall and built her own store building. This very thing was reducing the number of stores in our mall long before Amazon!
I haven’t bought anything in a mall for 20 years and I have no intention of going back either.
What killed malls for me was the larger they got, the further the parking was from the stores I wished to patronize. Completing a half marathon from the car to the store and back again with packages just made strip shopping centers so much more attractive. In real dollar terms, the peak of per shopper expenditure was in the late 80s. Rents at many malls were too high to be supported by low per shopper expenditure.
Tell me again why America is so fat.
Yin and Yang, you complain about how big they got and on the other hand the old folks take walks in them, happy to have a covered, air conditioned place to get a little bit of activity year round
Indoor mall are very expensive security guards ; maintenance etc etc :indoor mall great cheap hangout for young people: Sam club & Costco got very cheap food in store & shopping 🛍 without the mall
God forbid overweight suburbanites actually got a little bit of exercise in between walking from their gas guzzler to the shopping mall entrance lol
@@luke5100 I agree that America is obese, but a lot of the walking is done in the actual mall. It is inconvenient having to walk a mile just to get inside the mall especially when you have kids….
“Little Stinker”….lol
🍑💨
There were ghost malls before 2000. Personally I think the loss of the book store was a big part of what killed malls. When waldenbooks went under, it dragged malls with them. One thing that might bring flea markets and malls and such back is the HUGE increase in shipping costs. This is pushing out tons of ebay sellers, and getting rid of a lot of small and medium businesses that do mail order. Double shipping costs again and only places like amazon will be big in the retail market because they have their own shipping organization.
I spent several years working in retail management in our local mall. Looking back, it was one of the best jobs I ever had. Christmas was a busy, but exciting time. My parents usually went to the mall every Saturday night. Mom would but something to wear, but wouldn’t try it on and on Tuesday I’d be tasked with returning it. We still had by the blue law in effect at that time too. So on Sundays after I got out of church, I’d grab a bite to eat, head to the mall and be let in by security, do my weekly paperwork, and take Monday off. I haven’t been in the mall in ages. Mobility issues will do that. And one of my favorite stores just opened up in there.
The short-lived mall where I grew up was built in a declining part of the city with the intention of helping to revitalize the area. Instead it quickly became an urban zoo that people from the more affluent areas of the city refused to visit.
That's a big part of the decline, but we're not allowed to talk about it.
We had a mall like that they closed it and now it has a bunch of offices jobs and what not in in it. My husbands job as a place there that holds servers for a medical insurance company.
@@lot2196 argy bargy from the fellas and their lovely ladies has killed more malls than amazon and walmart combined
Ah yes, the malls that featured only baby clothes and athletic shoe stores 😂
Lance, it appears that you missed talking about the first mall in the US… Northland Center in Detroit. Victor Gruen first approached J.L. Hudson about constructing a mall in 1948. At first reluctant, Hudson’s eventually capitulated and started construction in 1952, and opened in 1954. Eventually, Hudson’s opened four malls around Detroit, Northland, Eastland, Southland and Westland. Northland closed 61 years later. A side note… J.L. Hudson also was behind the Hudson automobile (remember, this was Detroit…). Hudson’s deserves an examination by you, being the second largest retailer in the U.S. just behind Macy’s. Hudson’s merged with Minneapolis-based Dayton Department Stores in 1968, and eventually morphed into a small discount store they acquired called Target.
Target wasn't acquired by them, though. It began as a side project of Dayton's before the merger.
@tucsonbillD and dont forget Hudson's had the first Thanksgiving Day Parade in the US, besting Macy's by a year, and during WWII hung the world's largest American flag from its storefront along Woodward Ave....
@@truthsayers8725 Thanks… I forgot about those.
In Louisiana, Target is pronounced Tar-jay and the j sounding like a g!
@TucsonBillD, the Northgate Mall in Seattle (@7:04) claims to be the “first post-war mall” in the US. It appears to pre-date Northland by a couple years.
So sad to see the malls failing. I remember going to the malls as a kid with friends and families most of the time just to hang out, playing the arcades, and eating everything.
Grew up in the Mall.
Second home.
Grateful for the experience.......
Now in my 70's. Really miss them.
Malls stopped being "family friendly" and became the new "hoodlum street corner" as well.
One thing I've noticed is there's this active discouragement of just "hanging out" at the mall. There seems to be less and less places to sit and chat. They seem to want to keep you moving. Maybe it's just my area, maybe it's just my perception, but thats how it feels.
Nah, it's very real. There are very few places for teens and young adults to socialize anymore.
It's because so many of the teens that were just there to cause trouble ruined it for everyone else that wanted to enjoy it. The mall was always a great hangout for my friends and I when we were young, but there was always that element of delinquents there, fighting, shoplifting, vandalizing, etc. It got so security would start dispersing groups of more than 4 or 5 teens, and yes they took away many of the places to sit. I'm old enough to still remember when our mall had several smoking lounges throughout the concourse.
actually, i believe it's mainly for profit, as it's a general trend even for malls in affluent areas,@@digitalfootballer9032
@@digitalfootballer9032even McDonald’s have cracked down on hanging out. Many if not most now impose a 30 minute time limit.
You can hang out by yourself at malls here in town,walk for hours and barely see a soul.
I grew up in the southern plains and it was always a treat to go to a new city and check out the mall there. Almost every town of any size had one. Big towns like OKC had several. Crossroads mall was an experience.
I went to OU for undergrad and Crossroads was where you went in the 80’s. The Sooner Fashion Mall was very small and Penn Square, Quail Springs were too damn far away.
@@mhubbell9409I stopped at Penn Square mall for lunch once not long after Penn Square bank failed. It was eerie. Little did I know at that time how that event would affect the Okla economy for years.
Excellent episode. As usual when the History Guy chooses a subject he has a personal relationship to, especially from his childhood or youth, the result gets an extra sparkle to it. I have noticed this before.
One reason you didn’t mention was the slow change in mall demographics, which lead to more crime in the malls. Lots of inner city problems started coming to suburban malls
Correct. We're not allowed to talk about it.
Yep
I don't see why you can't talk about it, unless you're gonna claim only one race was responsible for the crime, but i'm from New Orleans and can say even with our demographics, the crime was equally represented by multiple colours and cultures.@@lot2196
Yes
And the malls were originally intended to avoid the so called city problems. “The mall” is part of the death of the city, and the internet is the death of the mall. It’s not necessarily a bad thing.
As a kid, Jamestown and River Roads mall, here in Saint Louis, were the main hang out places. Now, both have sadly been demolished. This was mainly due to Internet shopping and the growth of shoplifting.
I'm old enough to remember the days when going to the mall was a great treat. Times have changed for the worse in some cases - like the American mall.
I think the reason most people miss malls, and think of them fondly is because they were basically indoor versions of what we used to have in our cities/towns before cars dominated streets: walkable areas that offers people a third place to socialize.
Well done -- as far as you went. There's one huge piece of evidence that every essay on dead malls misses. Even the best of malls began to fill up the great open spaces we all loved with sales kiosks. These eventually took over those spaces formerly reserved for seating and socializing and clogged the pedestrian ways to the point that malls were no longer so pleasant to visit as they were when first opened.
The big mall that opened when I was a teen (1970s) had large, beautiful rest/seating/socializing areas throughout the mall. These spaces featured dropped floors, raised floors, interesting visual design, landscaping, fountains, etc. Within ten years of opening. all of these gathering places were removed, floors leveled, and a slew of sales kiosks put up instead. Wasn't long after that I stopped going to malls -- period. They had all become uninviting, overcrowded spaces choked with kiosks.
Agreed. There were amazing large seating areas, areas for kids to play in, and art installations in the malls I grew up with in Rochester NY and environs. They were FUN places to be in. The extra sales kiosks really ruined a lot of that in their desire to bring in more money per square foot. Suddenly there were no places to sit anymore, other than the food court, and you couldn’t just sit there; you had to buy something to justify sitting at the table. It made the experience exhausting rather than inviting, and paradoxically drove people away from malls.
Pretty sad, actually.
I still remember the day I ordered something off the Internet for the first time. I had this feeling that something momentous had just occurred. I had no idea how right I was.
Excellent point. It became a running joke that you'd get pressured and harassed by every kiosk vendor along your route. Nobody enjoyed or appreciated that.
Good point about social media being absent in the 1980s giving rise to the teen culture meeting place at the mall. The social media platforms have certainly had their place in killing mall shopping.
Dead Mall videos on RUclips have become very popular pioneered I believe by Dan Bell with many people following in his footsteps-sometimes literally-checking out failing and dying malls and the ultimate abandoned ones
Growing up on the San Francisco Peninsula, we used to go to the Hillsdale Mall. In the early '60s, a new thing appeared at the mall. The International Food Court. One of the food places was called San Remo. It served a new thing most of us had never had, pizza. He hand tossed the crust, throwing it up in the air, and always had a large audience watching the show. That was the first pizza I ever had and is still one of the best.
We didn’t have air conditioning and lived in an area where it was 95-104 most of the summer. It was miserable for everyone in our family so every Sunday my husband would pack a lunch while I got our 3 young children ready for church. After church we went straight to the big, beautiful, air conditioned Mall where we ate our lunch while people watching. After lunch the children were happy to stroll around looking at the stores then buying a frozen yogurt. We called ourselves Mallites! Often our parents and siblings would join us. That Mall was a godsend for us.
I can remember malls as early as the early 80’s, and that first mall shut down in 2000. When it comes to movies - “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure” comes to mind first when Bill tells the historical figures that it’s where modern people hang out, and first hearing that summed up its purpose for me.
Ever seen "Mallrats"? (Directed by Kevin Smith)
@@skyden24195 Only the last Stan Lee seen on a basic cable channel.
Arizonan here! I became an adult just this past year and it’s so unfair that I couldn’t ever see Metrocenter (San Dimas) Mall in its prime. I hope my other local malls don’t have to suffer the same way.
The smart phone is what really sent the Mall as a gathering place into a tailspin.
Sort of ironic: The mall was often posited as the downfall of the Mom & Pop store only to find that the Mall itself was economically unsustainable, while the Mom & Pop store works economically by its very smallness.
What I miss much, much more is the downtown department store, the kind where you could find everything. Here in Montreal I bought at the much regretted Eaton's store: fabric and notions, books, wallpaper, a sewing machine, tools and hardware, flower seeds, a Fornasetti umbrella stand, a fan-shaped fireplace screen, artwork, all this in addition to the usual: clothing, jewellery, cosmetics and toiletries, furniture, linens, etc. If I had been so inclined, I could also have bought oriental carpets or a piano. There was also the ninth floor dining room which was designed by the same man who was commissioned by one of the prestigious ocean liners of the era (both liner and Eaton's store dating from 1931 or so), a spectacular yet delightfully comfortable place for lunch. The elevators were operated by uniformed and gloved ladies who could tell you where to find any item you could be looking for. There were fashion parades and special exhibits. The store sponsored annual Christmas parades. It was truly a magical place, easily reached by bus and métro. The countrywide Eaton's department store chain went bankrupt in 1999, and I still miss it.
Montréal used to have four more downtown department stores: Ogilvy's, Simpson's, Hudson's Bay, and Dupuis Frères. Only Hudson's Bay is left, and it no longer carries as wide a range of metchandise as it did when it was possible to find _everything_ under one roof right downtown.
Shopping malls have their advantages too, but to me they can't compare. Big box stores have their use, but they have no soul. Internet shopping? Only when there is no alternative, thank you very much: I like to see and touch before I buy.
I'm not American, but I honestly miss the old days of malls in the 90s. Good times ❤
I've seen quite a number of malls in my area get closed down and sold. Two of the malls around here that have bucked the trend I think are worth mentioning. One is Music Center Mall, which is in Lewisville,, Texas. This mall bucked the trend by having a court in which bands of any genre can perform. Local acts starting out here can audition and perform there. The other is Northpark Mall in Dallas. This upscale shopping center kept people coming by also displaying fine works of sculpture in the common areas.For a long time, it was home to the Johnathan Borofsky sculpture "Five Hammering Men."
Music City Mall, if it’s still called that, is barely breathing. Last few times I’ve been there there hasn’t been any music, I thought they’d given up the music theme entirely. The place is half empty and shuts down by 7. I just made another comment here about how it’s a zombie. I like going there oddly enough but it’s hardly bustling.
Northpark is a well managed property.
Northpark was my teen mall in the 60s. One of my sisters worked at the photo store. My other sister soaped the fountain, a popular girl group rebellion thing. The record store was central to youth with booths you could listen to the music first before purchase. It was a safe interesting space to be in.
It is sad,very sad, once such vibrant places are now falling down and being knocked down. I was a teen in the 90s when the american mall was at its zenith. We'd spend at least 30 hours each week at the mall.
One of the things I noticed is that lines of sight for mass shootings are prevented; in other words, the food court does not become a shooting gallery.
All things has their sides. Here in Finland malls have emptied the center of towns, as all shops gone to mall, and steets are ghostlike. Now as corona emptied all shops, now malls are dimisihing here too. In Italy they are just in booming state, as they are now finding the malls as new thing.
That's basically what happened in the United States in the 70's and 80's, the downtown shopping areas were all marginalized and many left vacant as everything moved to the suburbs into malls. I still vaguely remember as a very young child in the early 80's going downtown in our small city and shopping with my mom, by the time I was a teen in the early 90's all that was long gone.
Here in Baltics if they would make online deliveries more easier, I'm sure most people would only shop online, since we are extreme introverts and hate socializing in general. 🙄
The first mega mall was the west Edmonton mall in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada opened in the late 1980's. The mall of America was inspired by it and outdid it in size.
Been to the Mall of America. Same stores on 4 levels. I wasn't impressed.
Wow I didn't know that, cool. The History Guy got it wrong though. The first enclosed shopping mall was built in 1828 not 1956. It's called the Arcade & is in Providence Rhode Island & is still open today. Googled it just to double check it because I learned it from school field trips.
I'm disappointed that the West Edmonton Mall wasn't even mentioned. It was a tourist destination that had a huge international draw. It could almost be a story unto itself. The world's largest mall, situated not in one of the population dense American coasts or European countries, but rather in Edmonton alberta with a population that was 1/30 the size of New York City (the entire Province had a fewer people that Los Angeles itself). Could talk about Fantasy land and the fight with Disney. The Mindbender tragedy. The Pirate Ship and Ice Palace. The fact that, at one point, the Mall had more submarines that the Canadian Navy.
@@sdyrkach2785 as a resident of Minneapolis when the mall of America opened, a lot of us were asked why we never went to Canada's mall, and we answered, because nobody goes to Canada for fun.
@@IzzyTheEditorI've lived in California and Florida and have been to Canada 6 times for fun. Several Cruise stops, skiing Banff, the Montreal Olympics, intense white water rafting (Ottawa River), sightseeing Quebec City/Toronto/Vancouver/Victoria/Ottawa, Via rail journey and Niagara Falls. Amazingly beautiful country.
Orange Julius. A blast from the past. I grew up in the 80's and it was still such a innocent time. Plus the best music ever.
The music of our youth is always the best music. Personally I think eighties music is garbage, but the seventies, definitely the best. 😂
Around 1990, an Italian journalist wrote an article about his trip to the Mall of America. In a sidebar, he asked "Will we ever see anything like this in Italy?" He concluded that Italy would eventually have malls, but they would have a distinctly Italian character. For instance, he wrote, there would be no place to park, there would be long lines at the cashiers, and the escalators would always be out of order!
Southdales center courtyard with the huge Christmas tree and basketball-sized ornaments is one of my earliest memories. Great episode.
Good morning from Ft Worth TX History Guy and everyone watching. Most local malls in the DFW area are empty. Very few stores are still open.
I am two years older than Southdale. I was more of a Rosedale mall rat in my teens but Southdale Mall was a very nice destination in the 70's and 80's before malls went buns up.
I was surprised by the look of the design drawings that you showed for Southdale. They were definitely from a by-gone day of skilled and caring drafters working at drawing tables. I'd love to see the full sets.
Grew up six miles from Southdale (7:15), and given Minnesota winters' extreme cold and summer temperatures that reached the 90s, the mall was great and where we went whenever we could as kids and teens in the 1960s and 70s. It's still open but struggling.
I missed Cinnabons so much that I learned to make them at home from scratch. Been doing that for twenty years now. I couldn't go to the mall without buying a Cinnabon with frosting. When they closed it threatened withdrawal, hence I learned to make them and the frosting. The last time I saw them for sale was in a box at a truck stop four years ago. Like McDonald's fries, they were but a shadow of their former self.
Oh hellz yes--care to share the recipe?!
At least the icing recipe. @@ingridfong-daley5899
Another great video. Happy to report my local mall here in Central Jersey is still very alive and kicking. But sadly a recent trip into North Central Pennsylvania saw one I remember all but abandoned and another torn down.
I live in the Minneapolis area. I remember very clearly my parents taking me to the Mall Of America for the first time. As a teenager I used to take my skateboard there and go to the top floor of the parking ramp cause they rarely had cars up there. MOA is still thriving, but Malls like the one in Maplewood and Burnsville are dying, especially Burnsville. It’s kinda sad to go to these places now.
Even after all the years I have spent watching every video you and your son have put out, I still feel it is the best written channel on RUclips.
Kudos to all at The History Guy.
Victor Gruen was interviewed at some point before he passed away, bemoaning what he saw as the warped, mutated evolution of the very creature he gave birth to. He had envisioned "The Mall" as a suburban replacement for the town square or village green, where community social life found a place in suburban neighborhoods. Neighborhoods which he saw as all too often separating and isolating neighbors from one another. He wanted the mall to have as much civic function as it provided a place of pure commerce, in the same way that the market square in Ye Olde European cities, towns, and villages did. He certainly did not equate the gaggle of teens hanging out at the food court with the kind of social interaction he had envisioned. For adults, again he saw it had become strictly a place for endless shopping, with little or no real substantive social engagement. He felt the American Mall had morphed into nothing more than a capitalist monstrosity, devoted to one thing and one thing only: The exchange of currency for consumer goods and services. He was not happy with shopping malls there by the end of his life.
There are 2 excellent songs about malls and their rise and decline: " Then God Made Malls" by Uncle Bonsai (who also wrote songs about "K-mart", "Billboard Love", and the "Family Restaurant"); and "(Time just turned it all) Into A Mall" by Don Henry ( that's Henry with an R and not the Eagles guy).
wow... i remember when flagstaff mall was built and opened... it kinda killed off the downtown ... i got a job at that mall (one of the worst jobs i had and i had a few of those but i wasn't working in the cold or unemployed).... to tell you the truth the malls are dying off because society is changing ... malls expose persons to lax and passive controls of unsocial behaviors (crime and vandalism)... if social controls are re-inserted within the communities to reinforce positive social behaviors and personal social behavior is rewarded (currently it's not) then malls may "make a comeback"... but the "buying experience" of malls is pretty much gone, who really wants to "go shopping" anymore when you can get stuff delivered at your door?... and most persons try to avoid areas where antisocial behavior is accepted/tolerated so the idea of "gathering for a social/cultural experience" at a mall is kinda dead as well... maybe in the future, society/community will again start accepting some type of public personal norms and not tolerate all the public displays of daily protests and unsocial behavior... or most likely that "old school" sense of community and society is dead and gone and we'll all just creep along in isolation brought on by all the iconoclasts that seem to be the vogue... anyway, the iconic memories of "shopping malls" are most likely now just "history that deserves to be remembered"
@@superman9772. That happened to my hometown too. Beaver Falls PA. as well as other towns along the river. And that was another example of societal change-sadly I think. I agree with you😢
@@janetcarbone4213 you know he brought up "mall movies" and that culture... well, one he didn't mention is "skaterdater" (1965)... it's on youtube if you'd like to watch it, it's about 20 minutes long...
"Then God Made Malls" ( Uncle Bonsai): When we were small, life was complete/wandering and working in pastures of meat/ Little to do, little to wear/mornings for chores and evenings for prayer..... When we were small Father would say/ plan for your future with every new day/ God gives us shelter, clothing and health /the devil will tempt you with women and wealth...... Then came the light at the foot of the hills/it grew brighter and brighter and brighter and brighter/ Men with machines building walls in the weeds/a crew higher and higher and higher..... Father was silent as he pulled up the blind/he said, boys mark my words/ it's the end of mankind..... Father died broken, a man of belief/ Winter brought frostbite, famine and grief/ But there was a light we always could see/ to lead us back home, to set us all free..... Then God made malls, and we were saved/ The hills were plowed and the fields were paved/ We found a place to kneel and pray/with B Dalton books and Bon marche'.... Then came the light with the sale of the day/ it grew cheaper and cheaper and cheaper and cheaper/ Designer names and video games/ We sank deeper and deeper and depper and deeper...." There's more but you'll get the general idea. They're not a religious group either, in fact they're indeed extremely sacrilegious in other songs.
Online shopping has changed the way we shop. Also, with all the advances in technology, malls don't have electronic stores as those stores went out of business. The mall used to be the place were teens hang out, but not anymore. Some malls have restrictions for teens
Yah, device consolidation really took its toll on major segments of consumer electronics. Look at a Radio Shack catalog from the 1980s or 90s; maybe 3/4 of it is gadgets that all got obsoleted by smartphones and computers.
The restrictions on teens had to happen because of thugs. Thug families move near malls, they see it as prestigious and they use malls to congregate, menace shoppers, shoplift, shoot each other, conduct drug transactions and abuse shop owners. THAT is the real reason malls died, they became dangerous. Age restrictions only help a little bit because thugs mentally remain juvenile criminals their entire lives. As middle aged people, they remain hateful and dangerous. Nobody is going to shop in an unpleasant, dangerous place.
but I like buying clothes in person better than on-line so I can feel the quality of the cloth and see to quality of the tailoring. I don't miss the mall as much as I do the department store. Walmart and Target clothing is not of high quality.
@@karenryder6317 Indeed. I'm fortunate enough to have a couple of Nordstrom stores nearby - I've favored them since High School because they have a lot of their stock available in tall sizes. Far more than any other department store. Rumor has it that all the Nordstrom boys are over 6 feet and they like to shop at their own store.
I once worked for GM customer assistance. We had 700 folks working in a call center in the old Penny’s portion of a mall. The rest of the mall was also more large call centers.
OMG it really IS the place where most of us got our ears pierced, family photos taken, and our first thong.
You covered all the bases--including the uncoverable ones. :) i love this channel!
We would go to the mall now except, packs of wild "teens" roam our local mall, robbing, beating and stealing from the shoppers. People stopped going.
Not many people remember that Chik Fil-A was only in shopping malls for quite a few years. There aren’t many “mall only” operations that successfully transitioned to stand alone operations like they have. Kudos to them for having enough foresight to do it!
For years my city had one of the only chik fil a locations not inside of a mall. It was amazing as a kid, they had a better playground than any other restaurant and you didn't have to navigate the mall Parking
The founder of CFA probably realized that malls could die off in the future, which is why there are many stand alone Chick Fil A's nowadays. The first time I went to a CFA was when I was seven years old around late '99. It was at the Eastpoint Mall across town here in Baltimore and my mom, sister and I took a bus, light rail and another bus just to get there. I think that mall had an Ames too. 🤔😄
@@jessicasmith5728Ames went under due to their 55 Gold program 😅😊
I wish Orange Julius had done the same! lol
Shopper’s World in Framingham, Massachusetts was wonderful. I worked at the Jordan Marsh during college. When the mall was demolished it was so sad. They said it was not lucrative anymore. When I moved to Virginia 20+ years later, to my surprise there was a mall in Short Pump, Virginia that is much like an upscale Shopper’s World! Same indoor/outdoor design!
So sad that millions of teens will miss their right of passage. Which was going alone to the mall for the first time.
Nowadays if a Spirit Halloween store appears at any mall, it's a sure sign that the mall is dead or dying.
Yeah, them and Burlington Coat Factory. You can usually smell the cheap leather a hundred feet away.
Best movie mall scene has to be The Blues Brothers car chase.
“How much for the Miss Piggy?”
"Institutes", such as the shopping mall, seem to be tied to the generation that gave it its popularity. When the generation moves on through life, the popularity moves on, too. I liken it to the drive-in movie theater, an institution from my generation. I was amused by the video's ironic citing of a newspaper (15:00), yet another quickly disappearing relic.
I'm in your demographic, Mike, and the death of downtown shopping, fancy movie palaces and responsible newspaper journalism has left a hole in our generation's culture.
Another place I think we are seeing this is in casual dining. Chains like Applebees really appealed to a one or two generation cohort that really prized consistency and predictability in dining above most everything else. They didn't want anything 'weird" or excessively ethnic. Certainly nothing too spicy. They craved the familiar and the repeatable. Chains like Applebees that enforced rules about which side of the sweetener caddie the salt and pepper went on, which way the bar stools faced when empty and a menu of basic fare really succeeded. Maybe Applebees with live on for a long time, but it seems to me that the succeeding generations aren't as enamored with chains for dining.
The Mall was also part of our parenting process. We would take our children and wander around the Mall every weekend.
Our teenage granddaughter also enjoys going to her local Mall, so perhaps they are not dead yet.
I remember seeing Mall Santa's 🎅 I said that's what I want to do. I would dress like Santa Claus and give away the full stockings to the kids. I would have my daughters dress like my little helpers. One of the most wholesome moments from that time was how a little 4 year old boy said " Mom I didn't know Santa was brown?" So I had to tell him how my dad had "Santa 🎅 " since his injury the year without a Santa Claus. He has his best behaved children speak to the kids and take their wishes! Incase you didn't know I'm the color of a Snicker candy bar . King Sized
Michael Barone wrote an article on the death of the mall many years ago. In the article he posited that the mall represented a safe place that downtown, urban shopping could no longer afford. When crime began to drop in the 1990's through early 2000's the mall had lost its relevance.
Now the malls are becoming crime centers, ironically enough.
thankyou lance one of your best! 👍
Thanks for posting
The town I grew up in had everything we needed downtown. After a local mall opened in 1967 the downtown businesses began closing. Now it has reversed! The downtown businesses have come back. Funny how what goes around, comes around.