April, 2007 - Labelscar: The Retail History Blog

Monmouth Mall; Eatontown, New Jersey

All of this Steinbach posting has put me in a New Jersey mood lately. Malls are as synonymous with New Jersey as Bruce Springsteen, so there’s plenty of neat ones to pick from, and the 1.5 million-square-foot Monmouth Mall on the Jersey Shore is one of the cooler ones that I visited for the first time in November of 2006.

The Monmouth Mall is visibly old, and originally began its life as an open air center built on the site of a former farm in 1960. A 1975 expansion brought it to its current, massive size, and renovations in 1987 and 1996 added a food court and movie theatre. Like many old malls, Monmouth Mall has had many anchor stores rotate in and out over the years:

Abraham & Straus became Stern’s, which in turn became Boscov’s. (You can even see a photo of this store during its Stern’s days here)
Bamberger’s became Macy’s.
Alexander’s became Caldor, which in turn became Nobody Beats the Wiz, which then became Burlington Coat Factory. While I have no firsthand experience, the mall directory makes it appear that the Loew’s Cinemas were carved out of this area as well.
Hahne & Company became Lord & Taylor.
There’s also a JCPenney. No idea what that might’ve been, if it was ever anything else.

The Vornado Realty Trust-owned center is one of the most successful malls on the Jersey shore today, despite a location that’s relatively close to the Freehold Raceway Mall, one of the state’s largest and newest enclosed shopping malls. I think Monmouth Mall is cool because of its bizarre floorplan and changing decor–if you look at the directory below, you can tell that there is one long wing that begins as a grand, one-level atrium in front of Macy’s before splintering into two levels (much like the Cherry Hill Mall) and continuing a long ways to the modern-day Boscov’s anchor store. In the other direction, at the Macy’s store, the mall takes a 90 degree turn and narrows substantially enroute to the large food court and Burlington Coat Factory store.

And if the floorplan itself doesn’t excite you, then look at the facade of the Macy’s (which is, again, a former Bamberger’s store): check out the wood paneling! It’s pretty vintage and fun.

EDIT 4/29/2007 10:11AM EST: Silly me, I forgot to finish my research when I posted this article. Want to see a vintage advertisement of the Easter Bunny at Monmouth Mall? Because you can.

Outdoor

Macy’s > Food Court wing

Macy’s > Boscov’s wing (2 levels)

Even More Steinbach Department Stores!

Last week, after I got all worked into a lather about that Steinbach photo that was sent to us by Michael Lisicky, he wrote me again, saying “You want Steinbach?” Boy, did he mean it.

He dumped this pile of old Steinbach shots on us, and we couldn’t be happier. We hope you enjoy them as much as we do. Michael guided us through each one:

The vacant downtown Asbury Park store, in 1984. It closed in 1979. The store burned in 1989 and lost its top floor and clock tower.

Steinbach in Red Bank, NJ. This was taken in February 1999 as it was preparing to close. It was 53,000 square feet. It became a Bon-Ton briefly before closing again.

The rear of the Red Bank store. The photo at the top of this post is the sign from the parking lot of this same store.

Steinbach at the Brick Plaza in Brick, NJ. Taken also in 1999. It opened in 1964. The store was the most profitable branch at the end of the chain’s existence and had just received a $1 million makeover.

Inside of the same store in Brick, NJ. This store also became a Bon-Ton and still is today.

This is a nighttime view of the Manalapan Mall location in NJ. In 1996 it became a Value City, along with the stores at the Shore Mall and the now-demolished Seaview Square Mall outside Asbury Park. This picture was taken in January 1995. It was located in a tiny, tiny mall that was active for most of its existence. It was the only anchor.

The last picture is of Michael’s old credit card, and a gift box from Steinbach from the mid-1980’s. At that time all boxes and bags named the store Howland-Steinbach. Howland was a store based out of Bridgeport, CT that was merged into Genung’s out of White Plains, NY. All of the small Steinbach’s in NY, CT and MA were former Howland stores. By the late 1990s all of those stores took on the Steinbach name. Though the store was named Steinbach those familiar with the Asbury Park area stores called them “Stein-BACK’s”. They were quite upper-moderate stores through the 1970s, but dropped off dramatically by the early 1980s. Former Ohrbach’s stores also became Steinbach in NJ and NY. Crowley-Milner from Detroit bought the stores in the mid-1990s but couldn’t keep them going. They all closed in 1999.

San Jacinto Mall; Baytown, Texas

Baytown, Texas is a large working-class suburb of about 70,000 people about 20 miles east of Houston. Baytown’s location on Galveston Bay has positioned it for industrial growth throughout the last few decades, mostly in oil and steel. Baytown is home to one 1.2 million square foot mall located at I-10 and Garth Road.

Opened in 1981, San Jacinto Mall is one of two major malls for the area east of Houston, the other being Pasadena Town Square in Pasadena. Both malls have recently fallen victim to the problems ranging from outdated to competition from other Houston-area malls. As a result, vacancy rate at San Jacinto Mall has skyrocketed and, despite several plans for renovation, the mall looks today largely as it did when it opened in 1981.

When it opened, San Jacinto Mall was a modern showplace containing 175 stores and an impressively themed two-level food court and entertainment area in the middle of the mall. The design of San Jacinto Mall is much like two overlapping “L”, with a square in the middle bounded by some of the anchors and the food court. In the 1980s, anchor stores included Service Merchandise, Mervyn’s, JCPenney, Sears, Beall’s, Palais Royal, Foley’s, and Montgomery Ward. Critics balked at such a large center, arguing that Baytown was not large enough to support such a development. And in the end they were right, but more on that in a bit.

The decor is what makes San Jacinto Mall an incredible relic. In today’s modern retailing world, shiny marble-like tiles, whitewashed walls, and frequent kiosks complement bright lights, soft edges and pewter fixtures, while sections of comfy chairs and area rugs are surrounded by unassuming planters. This is a stark contrast to mall decor of the 1970s and early 1980s, where earthen tones, woods, dark tiles, fountains and trees helped to create an artificial ‘inside’ world to woo shoppers away from the actual outside world of the downtowns the malls helped replace. In creating the inside mall space to mirror nature and the outside world, developers sought to give shoppers a similar, yet fake, environment for their escapist activities. They don’t do this today, giving shoppers a pristine environment to escape into the hedonistic world of shopping, actually favoring a balance toward capitalism instead of aesthetics in giving up the fountains and trees to provide kiosks in order to maximize profit.

I view this shift as mostly negative. Early mall developers such as Victor Gruen sought to provide awe-inspiring enclosed environments for the activity of shopping, giving rise to amazingly complex worlds complete with spectacular fountains, conversation pits, sculpture gardens, center stages, and even bird cages. These older centers provided more than a vapid utility, they were community-building places, significant in their own rite as more than just places to go and spend a buck. Sure, that was the reason you were there, but they felt less soulless. San Jacinto Mall has received little more than a few coats of paint during the past quarter century, and the decor is like stepping into a time machine back to this era. The wooden facades of the former Service Merchandise and former Walgreens complement the dark floors and instead of a few small ceramic planters, there are entire garden areas, some with full-sized trees. The high ceilings have a row of giant windows on one side, allowing a constant flow of natural light into the enclosed space, while the other side is curiously flanked with a continuous, arched mural of the daytime sky. Along the sky mural are humorous curiosities painted in, such as puffy clouds, jets with long contrails and even a roving gang of UFO ships, Space Invaders style. Mirrors and fountains are also not in short supply here.

Speaking of Atari, the food court and entertainment area near the middle of the mall is also worth noting. Between the first and second levels here, the ceiling has an early-80s latticework design made with slender metal beams, and the food court’s sign looks like it belongs on the cover for an early 80s video game. This area is the only two-level area of the mall outside the anchor stores, and the entertainment area on top features a full-sized carousel, playground and a few benches but oddly little else occupies the second level.

Today, San Jacinto Mall is like several malls in the Houston area with an abundance of stores near the central pivot points of the mall and a contrast of abandonment on the far wings. Anchor woes came in 2001 as Montgomery Ward and Service Merchandise closed amid the shutting of those chains; Bealls also closed the same year. In 2006, Mervyns departed the mall as they left the Houston area entirely. So, as you can see, the loss of anchors is mostly not the mall’s fault, but the loss of indoor stores is. Baytown is not large enough to support this development, and articles we’ve found suggest Baytowners (Baytownies? Whatever.) shop at the more successful Houston-area malls like the Houston Galleria and even clear across the metro area 50 miles away at Katy Mills. The mall today houses about 60 stores, and a popular cinema. At only one-third capacity, many of these stores are near the middle of the mall, and several wings are almost completely dead. Most notably, the Mervyn’s/Service Merchandise corridor and the Macy’s/Palais Royal corridor are faltering.

As a result of these problems, you can bet changes are in the works for San Jacinto Mall. The former Montgomery Ward wing, which was possibly the worst-off for the longest time, has now been closed and will soon be demolished. In its place, a “lifestyle” wing will be built, with little details released yet. If it doesn’t pump some vigor back into the mall, you can surely bet that large portions if not entire mall will be abandoned in few more years.

Our exclusive pictures of San Jacinto Mall were taken in April 2007. Add some of your own stories or comments about this truly interesting relic.

Food court area:

Outdoor shots:

More indoor shots:

Steinbach Unearthed!

Michael, one of our readers, sent us some historic 1986 and 1994 photos of the soon-to-be-demolished Shore Mall in Egg Harbor Township, New Jersey, just outside of Atlantic City, (as well as two shots of the now-horrifying River Roads Mall in Jennings, MO). All three shots are pretty cool, but I’m especially excited about the unearthing of the photo above–a shot of the departed Asbury Park-based department store chain Steinbach, memories of which seem to have disappeared almost completely right along with the chain in 1999. I never even got to go inside of one of these, but I remember they had some very mysterious New England locations (like Concord, NH, South Burlington, VT and Waterford, CT) that mystefied me even then.

This actually is a good time to share a photo set that I took of the former Steinbach store in Waterford, CT, just over the border from neighboring New London on US1. These shots were taken in early March 2007, and are of the former “Waterfall Place,” a very strange old strip mall-enclosed mall hybrid that once hosted Steinbach as its main anchor, along with a very small enclosed mall on its second level. Today, the long-vacant Steinbach has been redeveloped with a Sav-A-Lot food store on the first level and a Planet Fitness on the second floor, although its plaza is as curious as ever despite attempts to renovate. The second level of the Steinbach building, which once housed a small enclosed mall connecting from the strip mall, over the Steinbach store, and then down a set of stairs into the back/side entrance of Steinbach, has been cleaned up and reopened to the public, so today it’s possible to get inside and witness a truly strange piece of retail. It also sports a location of Rhode Island-based Benny’s Home & Auto Stores, whose survival continues to beat the odds, and which we wrote about last August. Check it out:

Inside the second level:

Plaza Periferico; Reynosa, Tamaulipas, Mexico

Just a few miles south of Pharr and McAllen lies the large Mexican city of Reynosa. At well over 500,000 residents, Reynosa eclipses McAllen’s population by about threefold. Many people are most familiar with Reynosa and the Mexican cities along the Rio Grande for infamous reasons: rampant crime, poverty, and maquiladoras. However, upon my visit, I noted that although conditions were noticably better on the American side, the criticisms of these cities are largely an overreaction promulgated by the American media. While, like many cities in any country, there were sufficiently visible examples of abject poverty, so too were there modern areas of the city with very typical, American-style conveniences including new subdivisions, convenience stores, big box, and even shopping malls. In general, the disparity between life in Mexico and life in the U.S., while noticeable, is not as significant as you probably think.

Since retail is our focus here, we’ll take a look at what Reynosa has to offer and consider comparisons to what we’re familiar with on the American side. In doing this, we hope to provide a brief glimpse into the parallel otherworld of Mexican retailing. Much like we’ve found with Canada, they have their own, unique chains and ways of doing things and it’s worth a shot to try and understand. However, several caveats: we’ve only been to Mexican border cities, and are aware that the interior is probably much different in terms of general conditions and offerings. Also, we don’t speak spanish (well, maybe un poco) so much of what we observed may very well have been lost in translation. That said, we’ll try to explain what we found, and add a new country to our mix in the process. Diversity is cool, after all.

Plaza Periférico is a very new, very modern enclosed mall on the far west side of Reynosa along the heavily-travelled main route to Monterrey. This route is also the major modern retail strip for Reynosa, and is full of fast food, big box, strip malls, and American-style chain restaurants. Home Depot, Sam’s Club, Office Depot, McDonald’s, Chili’s, Popeye’s, and HEB are all American stores with presence here. In addition to those are Mexican box chains and restaurants with which we are unfamiliar, including Sanborn’s department store, City Club warehouse store, S-Mart Grocery, Coppel Hidalgo, and impressively modern hypermarket Soriana. In addition, there’s even a new American-style brew pub called Sierra Madre Brewing Company. There are no less than three enclosed malls along or within a very close distance of this strip.

We’re starting with Plaza Periférico, which is at the west end of the aforementioned strip near the intersection of México Route 40 and México Route 2. Consulting Wikimapia, which proved as an invaluable resource for this non-spanish speaker in finding the retail strips in Mexico, Plaza Periférico was labelled yet not present in the satellite photo. So, we’re assuming it’s less than a few years old. Anchored by Soriana, Famsa (appliances), Cinépolis (a large multi-screen movie theatre), Woolworths (yes, that very same one), and a large food court, Plaza Periferico is your typical suburban mall. Most of the stores inside are Mexican chains we’re assuming, but many tenets of a typical American mall remain. For example, there are cars for sale parked inside, and the same kiosks were used to hock the same stuff: cable television, cell phones, and printer ink.

However, at the same time, there are differences too. In the parking lot, parking attendants rush over to you when you get into your car to assist you out of your parking spot. You back out, and they blow a whistle when it’s clear to proceed forward. Kind of interesting, yet I wonder why it’s necessary. To create jobs? The parking lots were no different or hazardous than those in the U.S. Perhaps they double as security for the lot because of more frequent thefts, and the parking assistance is just part of their job as well. The decor is pretty standard for a new mall, but the layout is a bit different. There are two large, circular courts at each end of the mall, and the anchors are sort of placed haphazardly throughout, yet the organization is efficient.

Take a look at the pictures of Plaza Periférico and the surrounding area, taken April 2007. Since, again, we aren’t very familiar with the spanish language, finding even internet resources about this mall didn’t produce much. So, we once again open it up to you, our readers, to fill in some of the details about this mall and the area in general.

El Centro Mall; Pharr, Texas

Pharr is a city in the Rio Grande Valley region of far southern Texas, a 70-mile string of cities between Mission in the west and Brownsville in the east, roughly paralleling US 83 along the Mexican border. The region is one of the fastest growing in the nation, with a current population of over 1 million and a projected estimate of 1.3 million a decade from now. This explosive growth is due, in part, to the presence of the border with Mexico. An estimated 2 million people live on the Mexican side of the border, and when combined with the U.S. side the regional population is comparable with that of Texas’ larger cities, like San Antonio. The region is also growing due to tourism from both Mexican nationals, snowbirds, and more recently eco-tourism.

As mentioned, a large percentage of the tourism in the Rio Valley of Texas comes from Mexican nationals, and much of that is for shopping. Even though NAFTA has made American-made products widely available on the Mexican side of the border, many of the large malls on the American side as well as other retail outlets are packed with autos sporting Mexican license plates, from Distrito Federal (Mexico City) to the most often seen Nuevo Leon (Monterrey) and Tamaulipas (the Mexican side of the border here).

Generally, however, these tourists and locals are shopping at super-regional malls catering to this cross-border region – malls like Sunrise Mall in Brownsville and La Plaza Mall in McAllen. As with other regions of the country, there are several centers which have fallen by the wayside.

El Centro Mall in Pharr is one of these. Located at the intersection of Central Ave and U.S. 83 in Pharr near the border with McAllen, El Centro was once the destination mall for the entire Valley and neighboring Mexico as well. However, with competition emerging in the 1980s from the massive behemoth La Plaza Mall just down the road in McAllen, both tourist and local dollars alike fled El Centro. So too did the anchors, with Sam’s Club and Montgomery Ward leaving and being replaced with Rehoboth Joy Dollar (former Sam’s), a Grand Central Station indoor entertainment facility, a Convergys call center, and a roster of mid-range stores, many of them local. The only anchor to weather the economic changes at the mall has been Bealls, a store which seems to never update its facade despite the success of the mall it occupies.

The decor of the 350,000 square-foot El Centro Mall harkens back to the 70s and 80s, with several stores sporting fronts which are a couple decades out of date. In addition, the lighting inside the mall is relatively poor and the ceilings are rather low. At least the Easter Bunny was there. He had some pretty cool digs too in the way of a tattered, brown la-z-boy from days-gone-by, but we digress.

Today, the future of El Centro Mall is in question. As of December 2006, the city of Pharr met with Houston-based owners Levcor Inc. to discuss the mall’s future, and impress upon the new owners their desire for renovation. The city would like the renovation to return the center to its retail roots, and kick the indoor entertainment facility as well as the call center out of the mix. The call center and entertainment facility have no plans to leave, however, and both have leases through at least 2009. In addition, Levcor recently purchased 10 acres to the north of the mall with plans for chain restaurants and other retail outlot activity.

Clearly, despite the downfall of the mall itself, the area is still growing by leaps and bounds and continued economic viability of the area seems likely. However, the mall itself will probably fall victim to redevelopment and be ultimately torn down. At any rate, the mall has been preserved here in visual form; pictures were taken in April 2007. As always, feel free to complete the story of El Centro through your personal anecdotes and a more thorough history than what we’ve already found.

Cherry Hill Mall; Cherry Hill, New Jersey

Sometimes there’s so much to say about a particular mall, that it’s hard to know where to begin, and that’s certainly the case with New Jersey’s Cherry Hill Mall, a classic Victor Gruen-designed mall in the Jersey suburbs of Philadelphia. It’s one of my favorites, and one of the truly classic vintage malls on the northeast seaboard. Cherry Hill’s past has been documented somewhat better than most other malls–if only the same were true of most malls that were this interesting!

The Cherry Hill Mall is owned by the Pennsylvania Real Estate Investment Trust (PREIT), and opened in 1961 as one of the very first major indoor, climate-controlled shopping malls on the east coast of the United States. With nearly 1.3 million square feet of space, the mall is one of the largest malls in the state of New Jersey, and currently features JCPenney and Macy’s as anchors; The vacant (and recently-demolished) Strawbridge’s space will be replaced by a Nordstrom in 2009 as part of a redevelopment that will also add 120,000 square feet of in-line space and dramatically reconfigure the center of the mall while adding a “Bistro Row” along route 38, containing a variety of new restaurants. Despite the mall’s gargantuan size, it operates somewhat harmoniously with the Moorestown Mall, 3 miles to the east, which opened only two years after Cherry Hill.

The Cherry Hill Mall is the largest, most dominant mall in the New Jersey suburbs of Philadelphia, and even predates the town of Cherry Hill itself, which was carved from the Delaware Township and named for the mall itself.

Because the mall dates from the era in which enclosed malls were grandiose showplaces, and because Cherry Hill was designed by Victor Gruen, the most famous of mall architects, there is a better collection of historical material available about it than about most of its breathren. In particular, there is a rather famous collection of postcards that were issued not long after the mall opened, that Keith Milford has collected over at his site, MallsofAmerica. Here are links to the various Cherry Hill-related shots, all of which are worth visiting:

The layout of Cherry Hill Mall is also fairly unorthodox, and it appears that it was possibly built out at different times. I’ve attempted to order the following pictures (all taken November 2006, before the redevelopment began) in a way that makes some logical sense:

The Macys – Strawbridge’s wing:

This long, one level wing with wide corridors and excessive greenery also contains the Woolworths “Cherry Hill Grill,” the space of which is still in operation today as the “Bistro at Cherry Hill:”

Cherry Court:

This large center court is extremely impressive in its sheer magnitude. Due to the crowds and thick shrubbery, it was tough to try and find a place to get a great shot, so all of these really only suggest the enormity of the room, which is probably close to 40 or 50 feet tall. There are even a set of escalators that used to go straight into the second level of the Strawbridge’s store.

Food Court:

Just north of Cherry Court, the food court has its own wing that is somewhat different in decor from the remainder of the mall.

JCPenney Wing:

Just past the food court, the mall splits into two levels, with the first floor half a level down from the main mall, and the second level half a level up from the main level. This wing seems somewhat more modern inside and out (possibly built in the 1980s?), and is currently the only portion of the mall that seems troubled, with a fair share of low-rent tenants and vacancies. The mall’s distinctive office tower is also located near this wing, just outside of the mall where the “split” occurs.

Exteriors:

And, as an added bonus, note this TJMaxx located behind the mall, in what is clearly a former JM Fields store:

UPDATE 8/12/2007: Jonah of Two Way Roads submitted the following photos, all taken in early summer 2007, which show the progress of construction at the Cherry Hill Mall (or, in some cases, just new angles on the same old mall). There are some nice shots of the former Strawbridge’s building, too, and that space has since been demolished to make way for a new Nordstrom and a two-level expansion of the mall. Thanks Jonah! Check them out:

Mall of the Mainland; Texas City, Texas

The Houston, Texas metropolitan area is both massive and diverse. In terms of population, at over 5 million people, it’s in the top 10 in the United States. In spatial extent, the Houston area stretches over 60 miles from Katy in the west to Baytown in the east, and over 100 miles from Conroe in the north to Galveston in the south. Everything’s bigger in Texas, it seems.

In terms of retail destinations, the Houston area has many ancillary or neighborhood malls with varying degrees of success, several successful super-regional malls and one dominant mega-regional, The Galleria, which draws from a local as well as visitor base.

For our purposes, we’ll start at the bottom. Mall of the Mainland is the Houston area’s southernmost mall, located at I-45, TX 1764, and Mall of the Mainland Parkway. It opened in the mid-1990s, functionally replacing the failed Galvez Mall in Galveston which closed in 1996.

Mall of the Mainland’s location plays an important role in its success, or rather lack thereof. It is the southernmost of 4 shopping malls on the 50-mile stretch of I-45 between downtown Houston and Galveston, which lies on the Gulf of Mexico. Mall of the Mainland is the first mall along this route coming from the south, approximately 10 miles north of Galveston and less than 10 miles south of the immensely successful super-regional Baybrook Mall in far southeast Houston. Due to this positioning, the mall really only serves Galveston, Texas City, La Marque, Santa Fe, and the immediate area. Anyone to the north would go to the more popular Baybrook Mall, and it’s also pretty obvious that people from the area around Mall of the Mainland go up to Baybrook and the rest of Houston to shop, because Mall of the Mainland is suffering.

The design of Mall of the Mainland is a basic dumbbell connecting Sears and Dillards with a long corridor in between. Along the corridor are Macy’s, Palais Royal, and a 12-screen movie theatre with a food court near the middle of the mall. Unfortunately, however, the interior of the mall is only about 20 percent occupied and has never enjoyed more than a 75 percent occupancy. JCPenney also operated at the mall but closed in 2006, favoring a location up the road at Baybrook Mall.

The majority of stores in the mall are located near the middle of the corridor by the food court and movie theatres, with a dearth in the radial wings. In fact, many of the stores are boarded up with temporary plaster while they decide what to do next. Rather humorously, some of the plasterboard features advertisements for the mall such as “Where shopping’s a vacation!” and others which caught my eye. Reading like a postcard between two ladies, Nikki and Gloria, who clearly share delusional shopping values, the text emphatically promotes the mall being ‘in the middle of everything’ and having ‘so much to do’ – even promoting mini-concerts and car shows. Hmmm. We’ll have to take their opinions with a grain of salt, judging by the relatively spartan shopping amenities. At the opposite wing of the mall near Dillard’s, fake stores were actually painted onto the plasterboard to give the appearance of actual tenants. Now, this has to be a bit tongue-in-cheek, and for that we love Mall of the Mainland. Of the rather cartoon-like faux stores featured are a bike shop, camera store, and a sailing supply shop. We hope that the fake stores aren’t confusing any shoppers, most notably Nikki and Gloria who seem to think there’s so much to see and do here. We’re guessing they might not get out much.

Jokes aside, the mall was built too big for its britches and cannot fill all its space due to competition from the super-regional Baybrook Mall less than 10 minutes up the road, as well as a lower-income residential base in Texas City and Galveston. The people of Galveston and Texas City alone cannot support this large a mall and those who could prefer to drive a short distance farther to shop at Baybrook and further afield. The pictures featured here were taken in April 2007.

The Shops at Ithaca Mall (Pyramid Mall)/Triphammer Mall; Ithaca, New York

Ithaca, New York is a small college city located in upstate/western New York, about an hour and a half southwest of Syracuse. With a permanent population of only about 30,000 residents, Ithaca itself is relatively small, but the presence of two large universities–Cornell University and Ithaca College–means that there’s a constant parade of new residents in town, and causes Ithaca to act as something of an island quite different from its surrounding environs in the Fingerlakes region of New York. As the bumper stickers say, “Ithaca is Gorges!”

Ithaca also has a unique mall landscape. The city is home to no less than four enclosed malls of some shape or form, although only one of them is a traditional enclosed mall. Near downtown are two centers that we don’t have photos of: the small yet worthwhile (and, at this point, a bit shabby) Center Mall, located just off the downtown pedestrian mall, which is tenanted with a variety of small and mostly local shops, and the DeWitt Mall, a tiny center in a converted high school that is filled entirely with funky local merchants.

On the city’s north side, however, are a pair of more suburban malls that we’re going to cover here in a single post: The Shops at Ithaca Mall (known until 2009 as the Pyramid Mall) and the Triphammer Mall, located just about a block apart along Triphammer Road at the junction of route 13.

The Shops at Ithaca Mall is a classic example of one of the malls developed by the Syracuse-based Pyramid Companies. Opening in 1976, the mall was relatively typical for what Pyramid was building at the time, which is an ever-so-slightly “v” shaped, one level, 600,000 square foot mall (very similar to the Hampshire Mall in Hadley, Massachusetts, or the Aviation Mall in Queensbury, NY). There were a few details to set the Shops at Ithaca Mall apart from other malls developed by the Pyramid Cos., however, and the most notable is the very unusual second-floor balcony area in the center court, on top of the food court. The food court–named the Cafe Square–was originally built with several sit down restaurants on the second level above the main court area, although this was converted to additional seating for the food court restaurants in the mid-1980s, and is almost always closed today (I’ve visited the mall twice, in 2000 and 2006, and it was chained off both times).

The Pyramid Mall’s original anchors were JCPenney, Montgomery Ward, JW Rhodes, and Hill’s, although all four of those anchors are gone today. The mall was sold by Pyramid in 2007 or 2008 and renamed The Shops at Ithaca Mall by its new owners.

JW Rhodes > Became The Bon-Ton, now located in an odd space accessed by several side hallways leading to the parking lot (check the directory to see what I mean).
JCPenney > Shut in 2001 during a round of closings when they were in trouble, the space has been converted to a trio of big box stores: Dick’s Sporting Goods, Borders Books and Music, and Best Buy.
Montgomery Ward > In 2002, the former Wards space was carved up and expanded, to house new stores for AC Moore, Old Navy, and Target. It actually appears that the mall blasts straight through the old Ward’s space, with AC Moore and Old Navy each taking half of the old Wards and Target occupying an entirely new building on the outside of the former Ward’s store. I’ve seen this done before only once, at the Mid-Hudson Mall in Kingston, NY.
Hills > Acquired by Ames in 1999 and vacant since 2002, the space is rumored to be the future home of an expanded and relocated Regal Cinemas.

The Triphammer Mall, just south of route 13, is much more of a rarity. While it’s not a traditional mall in the classic sense, it is enclosed (although not climate-controlled). The glass-encased plaza contains a curious mixture of local and national merchants, and was chilly and eerily quiet upon our visit in October of 2006.

Norwichtown Mall; Norwich, Connecticut

Most of the attention in the “dead mall” phenomenon has focused on large, once-thriving (and often, once-dominant) malls that were done in by changing demographics or newer competitors. On the whole, the smaller malls are seen as necessarily casualties, centers that never really worked or aren’t large enough to miss.

Strangely, I’m as fond (if not more fond) of these little guys, and it seems that an awful lot of the regular readers of Labelscar feel the same. On that note I present to you the sad little Norwichtown Mall, in Norwich, Connecticut, a deeply troubled 241,000 square foot mall that I doubt has much life left in it.

The Norwichtown Mall opened just off (present day) routes 2, 32, and I-395 in 1968 to serve the Norwich area of eastern Connecticut. While eastern Connecticut is one of the more rural areas of the northeast megalop, Norwich is one of the larger cities in the area, with a population of just under 40,000. However, the loss of the manufacturing industry (and the frequent ups and downs of the defense related jobs in nearby Groton and New London) hit Norwich particularly hard, and it has suffered from a malaise worse than many similar cities throughout New England. Today, however, the mall sits in the relative shadow of two of the largest tourist attractions on the east coast: Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods Casinos, which are each about 10 minutes away from Norwichtown Mall.

Before the region’s dominant mall, the large Crystal Mall, opened in Waterford to serve the entire New London-Groton-Norwich metropolitan area, there were two malls to serve each of the region’s two anchor cities. The appropriately-named New London Mall was the first enclosed shopping mall built in Connecticut, and was opened on the north Frontage Road of I-95 in New London. I’m pretty sure–though not certain–that the mall opened in 1958, with the first Bradlees store as one of its anchors (I suspect, though am uncertain, that a Sage-Allen was the other anchor). Sadly, this grand old relic–which remained very dated until its death–was demolished in 1998 to be replaced with a relatively bland strip mall that stands in its place today. I have no photos of this old place, and it’s near the top of my “want” list, so if you have any old New London Mall photos, please let me know!
The Norwichtown Mall, its northern cousin, was slightly smaller and slightly younger, with Caldor, Stop & Shop, and local department store Styles as its initial anchor stores. Styles was a smaller anchor that nonetheless was pitched as a somewhat high-fashion chain in line with G. Fox and Filene’s. I’m not exactly sure when they departed, but they were the first of the three anchors to shut.

In the mid-late 1990s, Stop & Shop modernized and expanded their store, eating some of the former mall space. At the same time, much of the mall was given a renovation and modernization. Not long after this was my own first trek to the Norwichtown Mall, in summer 1998. At the time, Caldor was still open, and the mall did surprisingly well for a mall of its size, and was tenanted with a diverse roster of tenants that would be appropriate for the kind of community-oriented shopping mall that would be anchored by a discounter (Caldor) and supermarket (Stop & Shop). There was a Waldenbooks, Hallmark, Radio Shack, an independent record store named University Music, and Bee Bee Dairy, a popular local creamery.

Unfortunately, Norwichtown Mall would not last long in this incarnation. Caldor went out of business in 1999, closing all of their stores, and several years later the space was occupied by a Bob’s Discount Furniture store, although they did little to drive traffic to the mall. Since Stop & Shop lacked mall access, there was not really a major reason to enter the mall, and tenants very slowly bled out of the mall until 2007, when Bob’s Furniture also left for a larger, newer store in East Lyme, leaving the interior of the mall barren and empty. During this time, a large big box center also opened in Griswold, just to the north of Norwich, siphoning off retail traffic from that side of the city and wedging Norwichtown between several more successful retail areas. Today, little remains beyond Dollar Tree, Radio Shack, a bank, and several other small stores.

There have been some rumors of big plans for the mall, with names like Target and Christmas Tree Shops being circulated, though presumably almost any plan to come along will (sadly) include disenclosure of the small and outdated (if still immaculate) center.

The Caldor Rainbow also took a trip to Norwichtown Mall last fall, and if you look at their set of photos in comparison to ours, you’ll note how much the place seems to have gone downhill in just a few short months. Our pictures are a little over a month old.

UPDATED 4/12/2009: Labelscar reader Bryan sent us these updated 2009 photos of the Norwichtown Mall, with a note that our old photos looked a bit “livelier” than the mall today. Seems hard to believe, but sheesh–look for yourself! The place is more desolate than ever.