Addison doesn't know it, but he wants to be as old as I am—73. I experienced the rise of the shopping center and later the shopping mall. I can attest to the excitement these things caused when they were new.
I grew up in the extreme southern tip of Washington DC, Congress Heights. The only shopping available within a mile of our house was a Woolworth five and dime and one full-service grocery store (Giant). If you wanted to buy clothing, you had to go 6 miles downtown to F Street or 4 miles to Anacostia (Pennsylvania Avenue). My mom preferred to go to F St, but I remember the tortuous search for a parking spot, going around the block several times.
Thus, when Eastover Shopping Center opened about 1955, just south of the DC border, relief was enormous— so easy to drive to, so easy to find a parking spot! JC Penney's at Eastover became the place where all family clothing was bought. This was before stand-alone discount clothing stores came on the scene.
Eastover became the place we thought of first, so reliable, so easy, so comfortable. But as Southern Prince Georges County continued to fill in, another shopping center, Oxon Hill Plaza was built a few miles into the advancing suburbs. This was a smaller shopping center, but along with other newly built facilities even farther south, it began to seriously take business away from Eastover. BTW, my first employment experience came at these places: two summers at the 5 and dime in Eastover (1967/68) and a third summer at the 5 and dime in Oxen Hill Plaza (1969).
By the mid-1970s, Eastover was clearly in decline, and it was in dire shape by the 80s. By that point, white folks had fled the neighborhood immediately surrounding Eastover. It was now a Black neighborhood. I am unfamiliar with Eastover's history after the 1980s, but clearly at some point things took a turn for the better. The shopping center looks in very good shape as of 2024, thoroughly renovated, as Google Maps makes clear to me.
As for shopping MALLS, I never liked them. I was aware that they generated great enthusiasm when they came on the scene, but the idea of just wandering around a mall looking at things I couldn't afford to buy never appealed to me. I am a kamikaze shopper—my ideal shopping experience is knowing what I want, knowing where I can get it, and spending 5 minutes in the store.
Strangely enough, the Internet has made a shopper out of me. I can now explore infinite possibilities for anything I'm interested in buying, and I don't feel a need to commit until I'm darn good and ready to do so. All this can be done during junk time, after I’ve lost the power of concentration for doing more important stuff.
I think the great thing you highlight that urbanists miss is that the suburbs didn't force the car on everyone - tho they may have required it. But you and your family shifted to shopping centers because it was close, convenient, and easy to park at. Downtown areas didn't have that, and your neighborhood didn't have a plethora of stores that could keep you from using your car.
Id say that's a key lesson. If we want to revitalize downtown, we need to make it accessible - whether for car or not. And if we want to make things less car needed, we need every neighborhood to have some shopping options.
Thanks for mentioning that “strips” can also revitalize. I live in a “strip” type area that is *not* adjacent to any of the nearest city centers (there are big areas of residential housing in between). So a lot of town government business is in such revitalizing. An entire old indoor mall was completely demolished and replaced a decade ago. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latham_Circle_Mall
As a fellow but a bit younger boomer, yes to everything Kathleen said earlier. But having grown up in Northern Virginia, I'll also add that when I asked my "greatest generation" parents why they bought a house in the suburbs, it was because that was where the new housing was that they could afford. There was a severe housing shortage after world war II. Which did basically force you into a car. And having to drive places meant you had to park places. So it's really not surprising that the strip malls grew up to service that booming (me and my generation) population. But as you and Kathleen note, these uses turned out to be temporary because as long as there was land available, you could keep building something "better" further along. And now the older strips and malls serve a new population of immigrant businesses (and have seen changing waves of immigrant populations). What I regret is that zoning seems to lock older buildings, parking lots and general layouts in place, so development keeps sprawling to new areas. And meanwhile, as you say, we now love the older walkable centers where the land prices have gone up enough for renovations to make sense. But I don't think we abandoned them because we didn't like them, we abandoned them because that wasn't where the massive amounts of new cheaper housing was.
Some cities made a series of leapfrogs. Strip malls pulled a bit of business from downtown, but not the major stores like Sears. The first indoor malls pulled Sears and Penneys, which killed downtown. Then the first malls got tired, and new malls were built on the edge of town where land was cheap. Sears and Penneys moved to the next step, which pulled more housing developments in that direction. Rinse and repeat.
There is another "golden mile" further up the US 15 corridor outside of Williamsport, Pa. Establishments along that strip would note it in radio advertisements in the mid-1990s. Maybe they still do.
“ We inherited these old cities the way we inherit grandma’s dusty old stuff before it becomes antiques. ”
—this line definitely gains some additional meaning (irony? Not sure) in light of the collapse of the market for antiques (or at least antique furniture) over the course of my lifetime.
One and a half miles east of the pictured area, in downtown Frederick, is Emporium Antiques, worth at least a couple hours' browsing if you're into that.
Addison doesn't know it, but he wants to be as old as I am—73. I experienced the rise of the shopping center and later the shopping mall. I can attest to the excitement these things caused when they were new.
I grew up in the extreme southern tip of Washington DC, Congress Heights. The only shopping available within a mile of our house was a Woolworth five and dime and one full-service grocery store (Giant). If you wanted to buy clothing, you had to go 6 miles downtown to F Street or 4 miles to Anacostia (Pennsylvania Avenue). My mom preferred to go to F St, but I remember the tortuous search for a parking spot, going around the block several times.
Thus, when Eastover Shopping Center opened about 1955, just south of the DC border, relief was enormous— so easy to drive to, so easy to find a parking spot! JC Penney's at Eastover became the place where all family clothing was bought. This was before stand-alone discount clothing stores came on the scene.
Eastover became the place we thought of first, so reliable, so easy, so comfortable. But as Southern Prince Georges County continued to fill in, another shopping center, Oxon Hill Plaza was built a few miles into the advancing suburbs. This was a smaller shopping center, but along with other newly built facilities even farther south, it began to seriously take business away from Eastover. BTW, my first employment experience came at these places: two summers at the 5 and dime in Eastover (1967/68) and a third summer at the 5 and dime in Oxen Hill Plaza (1969).
By the mid-1970s, Eastover was clearly in decline, and it was in dire shape by the 80s. By that point, white folks had fled the neighborhood immediately surrounding Eastover. It was now a Black neighborhood. I am unfamiliar with Eastover's history after the 1980s, but clearly at some point things took a turn for the better. The shopping center looks in very good shape as of 2024, thoroughly renovated, as Google Maps makes clear to me.
As for shopping MALLS, I never liked them. I was aware that they generated great enthusiasm when they came on the scene, but the idea of just wandering around a mall looking at things I couldn't afford to buy never appealed to me. I am a kamikaze shopper—my ideal shopping experience is knowing what I want, knowing where I can get it, and spending 5 minutes in the store.
Strangely enough, the Internet has made a shopper out of me. I can now explore infinite possibilities for anything I'm interested in buying, and I don't feel a need to commit until I'm darn good and ready to do so. All this can be done during junk time, after I’ve lost the power of concentration for doing more important stuff.
Love this comment!
I think the great thing you highlight that urbanists miss is that the suburbs didn't force the car on everyone - tho they may have required it. But you and your family shifted to shopping centers because it was close, convenient, and easy to park at. Downtown areas didn't have that, and your neighborhood didn't have a plethora of stores that could keep you from using your car.
Id say that's a key lesson. If we want to revitalize downtown, we need to make it accessible - whether for car or not. And if we want to make things less car needed, we need every neighborhood to have some shopping options.
Thanks for mentioning that “strips” can also revitalize. I live in a “strip” type area that is *not* adjacent to any of the nearest city centers (there are big areas of residential housing in between). So a lot of town government business is in such revitalizing. An entire old indoor mall was completely demolished and replaced a decade ago. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latham_Circle_Mall
As a fellow but a bit younger boomer, yes to everything Kathleen said earlier. But having grown up in Northern Virginia, I'll also add that when I asked my "greatest generation" parents why they bought a house in the suburbs, it was because that was where the new housing was that they could afford. There was a severe housing shortage after world war II. Which did basically force you into a car. And having to drive places meant you had to park places. So it's really not surprising that the strip malls grew up to service that booming (me and my generation) population. But as you and Kathleen note, these uses turned out to be temporary because as long as there was land available, you could keep building something "better" further along. And now the older strips and malls serve a new population of immigrant businesses (and have seen changing waves of immigrant populations). What I regret is that zoning seems to lock older buildings, parking lots and general layouts in place, so development keeps sprawling to new areas. And meanwhile, as you say, we now love the older walkable centers where the land prices have gone up enough for renovations to make sense. But I don't think we abandoned them because we didn't like them, we abandoned them because that wasn't where the massive amounts of new cheaper housing was.
Some cities made a series of leapfrogs. Strip malls pulled a bit of business from downtown, but not the major stores like Sears. The first indoor malls pulled Sears and Penneys, which killed downtown. Then the first malls got tired, and new malls were built on the edge of town where land was cheap. Sears and Penneys moved to the next step, which pulled more housing developments in that direction. Rinse and repeat.
There is another "golden mile" further up the US 15 corridor outside of Williamsport, Pa. Establishments along that strip would note it in radio advertisements in the mid-1990s. Maybe they still do.
“ We inherited these old cities the way we inherit grandma’s dusty old stuff before it becomes antiques. ”
—this line definitely gains some additional meaning (irony? Not sure) in light of the collapse of the market for antiques (or at least antique furniture) over the course of my lifetime.
One and a half miles east of the pictured area, in downtown Frederick, is Emporium Antiques, worth at least a couple hours' browsing if you're into that.