A few months back, I proudly proclaimed that I thought I’d seen all of the malls in New Jersey. Of course I hadn’t; New Jersey has tons of hidden malls, including this (sort of) departed gem, Cape May’s Rio Mall. Michael Lisicky sent us a great set of old photos from when the mall still had a smidge of glamour, as well as a sad set that shows what’s become of her. Check it out:

“With all of the attention on Labelscar that the mega-mall Mall of America has created I decided to pay homage to one of the smaller malls that I have ever known. Arguably New Jersey, for a state its size, is the King of Shopping Malls. Besides its hundreds of shopping centers everywhere New Jersey is home to such showplaces as the Garden State Plaza and the Cherry Hill Mall. However southern New Jersey was also home to many “mini-malls”, malls that were anchored by a junior department or discount store and/or a supermarket. These malls contained about a dozen stores located between the anchors where shoppers could support these businesses where “every day is like Springtime” (from an old Cherry Hill Mall advertisement). Centers like the Cinnaminson Mall, the Tri-Towne Mall in Marlton, and the Village Mall in Willingboro are now a distant memory for many as the novelty quickly wore off. But nobody pulled off the “mini-mall” better than the Rio Mall.

The Rio Mall is (was) located in the southern tip of New Jersey four miles north of Cape May. Cape May County in the early 1970s was still quite seasonal and, besides a few small centers, serious shopping was still a half hour north near Atlantic City. In came the Rio Mall. The Rio Mall was built in 1973 in Rio Grande, NJ. It was a novelty for its time. The closest indoor mall, the Shore Mall 30 miles north, would actually not complete its final construction with its new glitzy Steinbach store until 1974. The Rio Mall had no big department store. It was anchored by a Grant City, an A&P, a movie theatre, and about 15 other stores. Each store in the mall basically served one of every type of need. From the start, the Rio Mall was a success. It was constantly occupied but not just by local fly-by-night storefronts. The mall, unlike most “mini-malls,” had a full Deb Shop, JS Raub shoe store, Thrift Drug and the upper-end branch of Atlantic City’s famous Palley’s Jewellers. With little competition and the fascination of indoor shopping Cape May County was happy.

The Rio Mall wasn’t necessarily a mall where you could browse all day. But if you wanted a new pair of shoes, wanted to fix your watch, needed to buy some cards and catch a movie it was “one stop shopping”. Even when Grants closed their doors with the rest of the chain in 1976 the anchor store did not stay dark for long. In came K-mart. Even Atlantic City didn’t have a K-mart until after Woolco closed its store in 1982. For years the Rio Mall served the county well. Along the way it lost some stores but they were quickly replaced by such chains as Rafters, a NJ woman’s clothing store and a (small) Reynolds junior department store.

But then the area became more year-round. Demand for shopping grew. Soon some of the earliest power centers would invade its territory. JCPenney built a new store down the street along with Peebles. Thrift Drug merged with Eckerd and left to a store next to Starn’s Shop-Rite. Reynolds moved into a “real” storefront across the street. Palley’s closed all of their stores. By the mid 90s the exodus was in full swing. Slowly the mall began to die. It tried to survive but for many it was time to move on.

So what’s left of Rio Mall? Not much anymore. Kmart still is going strong but the mall was “removed”. Kmart took over much of the mall’s space as it braced for a hit from the area’s first Wal-Mart down the road. The theaters are there but they’ve moved. (Actually the theater company, Frank’s, had purchased the mall not long ago from mall owner PREIT but is now looking to unload it.) There is a strange corrider that is still left from the old mall. It’s almost like a hurricane came through; part of the mall is still there, but now it’s open to the elements. The ceiling tiles are still there. The framework to Thrift Drug is still there. But it’s all filled with trash. But what does remain is perhaps one of the perfect “labelscar”s of all malls. The Rio Mall sign still peeks from its bricks hoping that someone still remembers the role it once played in the growth of Cape May County.”

From the look of Michael’s photos, I really didn’t miss anything–at least not nowadays, anyway. I’m am, however, glad for the chance to see what it was like–thanks Michael!

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)

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:

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.

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:

• Market Court
• Cherry Court
• Kresge’s and Mall Aviary
• Woolworths “Cherry Hill Grill” (My Favorite)
• Woolworths and Exterior Facade
• Historic Aerial View
• Main corridor view
• Another main corridor view
• Bamberger’s (Current Macy’s)
• Fountain in Cherry Court

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:

Smaller, ancillary malls have long been a favorite of mine, in a large part because they seem to be at far greater risk of redevelopment than larger malls, and also because many of them have not been substantially updated.

Another major reason is that I like the idea of a “community mall,” and am not sure why it hasn’t worked better in the United States. Suburban areas without a traditional downtown are ripe for a smaller enclosed mall that contains a mixture of stores selling essentials, such as a discount department store, an off-price fashion retailer, several restaurants, a pharmacy, service businesses (haircut places, cell phone dealers), as well as community gathering spaces like bookstores or coffee shops. When I find a mall that seems to actually achieve this balance, it’s a cause for celebration.

When I first visited the Mall at Mill Creek in Secaucus, New Jersey, in the center of the Meadowlands just 5 miles west of Manhattan, it was the summer of 2000 and the mall seemed to be doing marvelously as a smaller, community-oriented center. With about 400,000 square feet of space, it was no monster, but with anchors like Kohl’s and Stop & Shop, it drew a rather large local clientele from the geographically-isolated, inner-ring city of Secaucus and was almost completely tenanted.

Fast forward to November, when I finally went back, and see for yourself the state in which I found the mall. I wasn’t actually surprised to see it so sparse, and what seemed to be charmingly unrenovated in 2000 seems somewhat bleak and brutal in 2006. If anything, I expected this, because this is the fate that has befallen almost all enclosed malls of this size and type in the past six years. Clearly The Mall at Mill Creek is no exception: it’s pretty safe to call it a dead mall now.

There are a few interesting things I want to point out about The Mall at Mill Creek:

1. One of its anchors is a Stop & Shop grocery store, with its lone entrance facing into the interior of the mall. Note all of the senior citizens lined up in the mall with their shopping carts in one of these photos.
2. The mall is part of a larger complex owned by Hartz Retail, called Harmon Meadow. Across the highway from the mall (but linked via internal roadways) is a large, outdoor mixed use complex that includes several hotels, a movie theatre, restaurants, more stores, and several office buildings. This center appears to have been developed in the 1980s (or even the 1970s), long before the current “lifestyle center” craze, and at the moment appears to be faring far better than the mall itself.
3. The demographics of both the mall and the area appear to skew somewhat older than is typical, which may have contributed to the mall’s downfall. These pictures were taken on a Saturday afternoon, and a large portion of the patrons in the mall at the time were senior citizens. Similarly, Secaucus is a classic example of one of New York City’s older suburbs, densely packed with street after street of brick row houses adorned with shiny metal awnings. It’s charming, but also very mature, and it’s possible (and even likely) that a large portion of the population is no longer the mall-going crowd.

I don’t know much about the history of the mall, so if you can fill us in, please comment away.