I remember there being sheets of clear plastic or plexiglass appearing/beginning up in the air and cascading down into the fountain pool… specifically in the larger size pool in the food court area. Being part of the fountain, water flowed smoothly down the “invisible” sheet until it splashed into the water. This was, of course, before the food court was there. The fountain gave an illusion of a magic, floating waterfall. My dad would take a few steps down close to the fountain and hold me over the pool so I could reach way out… with one finger… and touch the flowing water. It was cool. I would love to just see a picture of it again.

I ate once, as a child, at this mall’s “Max & Erma’s” restaurant location during it’s first run in the Louisville market. Typical of that era, there was lots of very dark wood, tile, and brick. When I visited, there were phones on the table. There were many in our party, so we were spread out at different tables. We could pic up those phones and talk to our fiends at other tables.

Though small, there was a 2nd floor that provided offices for the mall operations and public restrooms. The stairs to the 2nd floor stood/hung in a suspended fashion that spiraled upward by way of straight segments and 90 degree turns (similar to the way the stairs currently wrap around the elevator at Oxmoor Center’s center court). The location was within the large, open area around the Bacon’s location; closer to being between the current stores “Body Shop” and “Brookstone.” When I had to take care of business, I was always sure to use the 2nd floor resroom because the stairs offered great views of the mall.

The fountain (one of the few left), with the “horse spouts” in the area of the (former) Bacons, New York & Co., and Body Shop, used to be covered up each holiday season with a platform that supported a gigantic Christmas tree made of poinsettias. My memory is fading, but I don’t believe there was an actual tree… it was a tree-shaped structure that supported the plants. It was cool. The view was even better from those stairs to the second floor previously mentioned.

Oxmoor Center:

If memory serves, the Oxmoor Cinema had four screens… two downstairs and two upstairs. I am a little foggy on the two screens upstairs as far as location… the entrance was in one of the corners of the square-shaped upper level. I’m certain that Old Navy is in the location of the two screens on the lower level. “Christmas Vacation” was the last movie I saw there.

The BEST 70s-era, holiday decoration provided by any Louisville area mall was at Oxmoor, IMO. The sunken, brick-lined center court was transformed into a winter wonderland complete with streams, snow, ice, and many scenes with moving animal charactures. Santa was purched on what I called the “ice palace.” There was more than one way into the center court, but the best way was the covered bridge… overflowing with snow & icycles. Kids could also ride a train that ran the length of the mall (not on a track… regular tires).

Just reminiscing…

When it opened in the early 70s, Oxmoor was the more popular of the two malls, opening with Stewart’s and Shillito’s anchors. There was also a twin movie theatre, the Oxmoor 1 and 2 where I saw several movies in the 70s.

In the category of dead malls, two spring to mind: Raceland Mall on south Bardstown Road and Westland Mall on Dixie Highway, the latter which has been de-malled. It opened with a Grant City anchor and soon after Grant’s died, it was replaced with a Target (though the exterior to this day is vintage Grant City). A Consolidated Sales store was already built when Westland was haphazardly bilt next to it. A real dog of a mall, it sat half-built for a few years before finally being completed (cheaply). I remember birds nesting in the exposed rafters. There were no fountains, no frills. It may be said that the nadir of Adam West and Burt Ward’s career could be pinpointed here when in 1976 they stopped here one day to sign autographs. I did the posters. The mall’s odd architecture, so to speak, never made any sense. It seemed to have been designed by Mr. Haney of Green Acres, with a concourse that narrowed down to the width to about ten feet at Consolidated. There was a great deal of wasted space and an enormous parking lot, so it never made any sense.

Not a mall, but the most infamous of failed shopping centers in Louisville was the very briefly grand Algonquin Manor. Built around 1960, one of its anchors was the Family Fair department store. One fateful Sunday, there was a gas leak in the garden department and BOOM, Family Fair simply ceased to exist. For years there was simply a chain link fence across the hole in the center of Algonquin Manor, then the neighborhood around it got worse and it quickly became a ghost town. It owned by the same company that ran the once very successful Dixie Manor Shopping Center. Some of Algonquin has been torn down, and what remains is a storage facility. Dixie Manor also still exists, but the original anchors are gone. Ben Snyder is now a health care center (as is the entire Bacon’s Center a few miles away), and the elegant Kaufman-Strauss, added a few years after the center opened, is now the Dixie Dozen Theatres. But originally there were about forty stores, including a Winn-Dixie grocery that had an underground conveyer so you didn’t have to wheel your cart out to your car, you were given a number and picked up the groceries from an attendant in a small building in the middle of the parking lot. Like Algonquin Manor, Dixie Manor was not enclosed, but there were several groupings of buildings on both sides of a walkway which could have been easily malled. Oddly, they chose to tear down these islands not too many years ago.

The exterior, however(aside from the new mall entrance that was built by the new 12-screen multiplex theater, and the renovated/brand new entrance into the food court), hasn’t been changed much, for now. The old ’solitication and distribution of handbills is prohibited’ sign outside of Sears, amazingly, is still there! (and I halfway suspected that the sign would’ve been taken down by now on my last visit, but it hasn’t) I’m still waiting to see if they do any changes to the other mall entrances and to the exterior, beyond the changes I’ve noticed by the new 12-screen multiplex, and by the food court…..

That being said I don’t consider painting the walls white, adding advertisments and adding kiosks/removing fountains a renovation. It’s more like crapping up the interior and clogging it with useless obstacles (I hate kiosks that take up more space than the hallway -_-).

A shame, myself being into older design elements, but in honesty, that mall needs it. That mall was still stuck in all its late-1970s glory with its globe light fixtures and all the wood and copper tone color palette when I visited back in 2004. I should’ve tried to get interior shots (I got exterior ones) of that place when I had the chance.

They’re most likely ‘freshening’ up the place by giving it a ‘blah’ generic whitewash makeover. I could be wrong though. Someone should keep tabs on that remodel for us.

http://www.labelscar.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/mall-st-matthews-11.jpg Concrete

http://www.labelscar.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/mall-st-matthews-10.jpg Steel

The point where it transitions is neat because the ceiling takes on a multitude of colors and the effect is quite neat.

I was here in March and most of the fountains and planters still were present. I really hope GGP doesn’t bland up this mall with the new “renovation” (Given GGP’s history of Malls in the area such as Florence and Kenwood, they usually just tack on the new addition and leave the old part alone. Time will tell.)

Also, there used to be four palm trees in the tall court beside the food court, “Picnic.” Kiosks were moved to cover the holes where the trees once stood. The kiosk in the picture is one of them.

And, yes, General Growth does now own both Oxmoor and Mall St. Matthews, and similar changes have occurred at Oxmoor, with the removal of about half of its center court fountain.