Yes, the store that was for many years Media Play was, indeed, Woolworth’s in the original open air Shoppingtown. In fact, the configuration of the store never changed. The large staircase was a part of Woolworth’s and took one down to the toy department and children’s clothing.

Dey Brothers, in what is now the Sears building, had a great restaurant on the first level toward Erie Boulevard. Known as the Old Erie Coffee Shop, it offered good food at modest prices within a Syracuse history themed setting.

There are just a few reminders of how the original mall was configured. For example, the free standing bank near the Erie Blvd entrance just up from I HOP was actually attached to the original mall and was Onondaga Savings Bank. The Scotch and Sirloin restaurant has been a fixture near that bank for fifty years. The Kallet Theatre (It was a double theatre), now gone, stood across the entrance way from the Scotch and Sirloin, and were the first large movie theatres in the eastern townships of Syracuse. The next was Cinema East which stood next to McDonalds on Erie Blvd, just a few blocks from the mall. That, too, is gone.

There are some incorrect statements about the origin of Shoppingtown. The mall opened as a large strip mall in the eastern suburbs in the mid-1950’s. Dey Brothers, in the early 1960’s opened what they called their Store For Homes which initially sold only home furnishings etc. This was Dey’s first foray outside of the downtown area. By the mid-1970’s there was incredible growth in the DeWitt, Fayetteville and Manlius areas and the mall was reconfigured to an indoor mall. This explains why the corridor toward the Sears store (which had been that original Dey Brother’s store) is not level and follows the contour of what had been the walkway of the outdoor mall. Dey’s was now a full department store and E W Edwards opened their huge store in the center of the new mall. Today, that store is a J C Penny store and only in the last few years has the E W Edwards chandelier which stood over the escalators been removed. Chappells also opened a large store in the new mall. By 1980, this mall was home to suburban branches of Syracuse’s finest old stores. In addition to Dey’s and Edwards, the mall hosted The Addis Company, Economy Books, Wells and Coverly and Flahs. The mall was renovated again in the early 1990’s and there is another plan to open the corridor toward Sears and return it, once again, to an outdoor plaza. This mall speaks volumes about the rise and decline of local Syracuse retailing. For those of us who grew up in that great old city, it is sad to see all of the generic stores which one can find anywhere in America, standing in the place of wonderful Syracuse stores which, one by one, were bought out by the inane “bon tons” of this world. These local stores followed population shifts and trends and slowly their downtown flagships closed and then their suburban satellites were absorbed by generic stores and the great old names disappeared forever. This pattern was repeated in every city across America. How sad.

The fire occurred several years before I went to work there, but the facility was completely rebuilt and all damaged equipment replaced.

More info on the Kallet Theatre here – you can see the old Channel 9 entrance in some of the photos:

http://cinemasightlines.com/cinemas_cinemaviews1.php

http://cinematreasures.org/theater/21996/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WSYR-TV

Does anyone remember this? What caused the fire? How bad was it? Where were they located in the mall? In the Sears wing?

Edwards’ was a early 20th century chain, with three huge downtown stores in Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse. I believe that the Edwards family was from Syracuse.

The Edwards stores prospered through the mid-20th century, when they were sold to Almy-Gorin Stores of Boston in the 1970s, owners of several New England legendary stores, including RH White, and The Star Store. The downtown stores closed in all three cities (although I believe that they may have pulled out of the Buffalo area earlier than the 1970s).

I do not know about any of the Edwards branch stores in Buffalo or Syracuse, but there were two in Rochester, at the Pittsford and Ridgemont Plazas. They continued to operate under the Edwards name until the early 1980s, when they suddenly took the Almy’s nameplate. The Pittsford store was completely renovated, but the Ridgemont store was not, a charming but dated reminder of what branch stores looked like in the early 1960s. By 1985, both Almy stores closed.

There doesn’t seem to be a lot of information out there about Edwards in the research that I’ve done. But they were an important store in Central and Western New York, especially in Rochester and Syracuse.

Does anyone know what they are doing? I read some of their renovation plans on their website, but the articles seem to be nearly 2 or 3 years old. Same with the pictures here. What are they waiting for? Eerie Boulevard is such a prosperous retail area, and you would think the owners of such a mall would make greater strides to move in businesses and get the shoppers coming back.

It’s still a cool place to hang out due to the massage chairs available, the privacy, the cool architectural design and the carpeted floor.

There’s a golf training center in an old store and Branch’s Driving School in the basement of that portion and that is IT for the Sears wing. There must be nearly 20-25 perfectly suitable store spaces which are now vacant. And what is sad is that nearly half of the stores which once inhabited these spaces have only moved to other more ‘lively’ areas of the mall.

Sears thrives of course and believe it or not people still make the long trek from the end of the hallway to Sears even though there are NO stores along the way.

I hope they revitalize the Sears wing and do not close it off/ tear it down, making Sears an Open Store…all the mall needs is a Solid Anchor Store in the old Media Play space and the area would revitalize.