As you can see, it wasn't just a clock, it was a kickass gigantic awesome mechanical clock. It was fun to just hang out and watch the mechanism do its thing. And it had chimes.
One of the original (and longest?) tenants of the mall was a clock shop, located in a suite right by the big clock.
According to that, the clock itself was originally made in 1915 and was installed in a clock tower in a Goodyear building in Los Angeles, but that tower had to be torn down for earthquake safety. So the clock was moved to Texas. After the mall was closed, the clock was put into storage, and some pieces may have been lost, but possibly not the important ones.
There was a naming contest, and the clock was named "D Old Timer". ("D" is sort of a local shorthand for Dallas. There's a "D Magazine".)
That is some awesome, vintage mall footage right there. Definitely giving me some 80s and 90s vibes from my early childhood. A little wild to think that this fixture of late 20th century life is on its way out. The clock tower is a nice touch!
It's been like this from the beginning, just perverted:
> Gruen had meant well. He wanted to import the pedestrian experience of modernist, European cities like Vienna and Paris into America, where the automobile was king. By creating places for community in the deserts of suburbia, he hoped to lure people from their cars and into contact with one another. The malls would be for shopping, yes, but also offer food, relaxation, and green space. In his original conception, malls would also connect to residential and commercial space, medical care, libraries, and other public spaces. Even though unrealized, this idea was not that different from today’s New Urbanists, who advocate denser, more walkable mixed-use development in cities broken up by the dominance of the automobile.
> Gruen would eventually disavow his creation, expressing disgust for how malls had exacerbated rather than ameliorated urban sprawl—not to mention exporting it globally, infecting the Old World with this land-use virus of the New.
Depending so heavily on the automobile was the key decision. Even now it might hamper many such efforts, because most malls seem to be surrounded by a huge Pelennor Field of hot asphalt and hemmed in by freeways or wide boulevards that might have pedestrian facilities as sort of an afterthought. So they really had better strive to be self-contained and offer everything someone might need.
The problem, IMO, has always been that after the World Wars we failed to come up with regional governance for metros, so that we could not curb the worst excesses of formerly rural counties undercutting each other for an adrenaline shot of increased tax base from suburban development, without properly accounting for the lifecycle cost of infrastructure. It is also a lot harder for individual developers to lobby a single regional government than it is for them to play smaller localities off of each other.
Washington state created the Growth Management Act in 1990. For the most part, urban boundaries have stopped expanding, and coincidentally the mall being used as the poster child for this article is located in Seattle.
It's an interesting co-evolution (or lack of) with dramatically scaled corporations, as well.
Pre-interstate, you didn't have as much consolidation of firms (e.g. local burger vs McDonald's, local inn vs Marriott). The national firms that did exist tended to be in higher-capital industries (e.g. transportation or resource extraction).
So firms grew in scale and power from the 1950s+, but government structures did not. With the end result of pitting Lilliputian local governments against nation-spanning corporations.
My apartment is on top of a shopping centre. There's the three major supermarkets, various electronic and fashion retail, a large doctors surgery, radiology and pathology labs, physio, dental, a bunch of pharmacies, and a whole lot of restaurants.
It's incredibly convenient for me. That said, there's been a lot of closures of various stores, and I know other people have repeatedly mentioned that sometimes it feels like a ghost town. I suspect that without the built-in client base living above, that there would have been a lot more closures of stores.
And bowling alleys and McDonald's playgrounds, and really most restaurants had a smoking and non-smoking section, but it would still drift over and foul up the whole space.
Though I was a smoker myself I’m greatful we mostly made away with this habit and banned any indoor smoking, it stank soo soo bad, it’s surprising smoking caught up in the first place. Learned from Adam Curtis documentary Century of the Self how Edward Bernays started the whole thing up. It’s a great documentary btw
This has been a thing in Asia for a while (you'd see real estate booths at other malls promoting these properties) and I'm surprised it's just now catching on in the US. Malls are great because they usually have frequent-ish local transit to get people to and from the place. With the housing you can easily get a grocery store or a Target/Wal Mart to be your anchor tenant. These spaces are also being refit into healthcare facilities and churches too so you can essentially build a small town into a mall property provided you can get it all packed in there.
On further thought, I wonder what leads planners and leaders to decide that a mall should become a new-urbanist town square or an Amazon fulfillment center?
Loans are the driver for this quest of yours. Imagine two stores one of which can pay 100 moneys, and one of which can pay 110 moneys. Not much difference right? But if you have to pay 105 interest, then it's a huge difference.
That is so interesting. I hate going to malls because there are so many people there. But that seems to have been part of Gruen’s original intent - to bring people in close proximity to each other. No thank you.
For those who wanted more social contact though, it definitely filled a need that wasn't being met otherwise. Many suburbs are almost completely without any sort of public gathering places other than church & school, i.e. places that don't dictate what to do and how to act. Granted the mall has its limits too, that's why there's the Mickey D's parking lot!
agree with you / have similar feelings these recent days - but would not have 25 years ago in the same places with the same number of people - so I think we are finding it takes more than build a spaces and they will come and befriend and be merry.
Makes me remember how things were very different in malls around here back in the 90s.. not sure when it exactly changed.. but many things changed immensely - and mainly with the types of people that you would be surrounded with.
There was also a different vibe with affordability of nearly everything back then.. that had mass effects I'm sure..
Now I'm trying to decided just what time frame so many things changed where people were more rude all around (customers and employees) - and in order to get the kind of customer service these days you almost need to go to some super expensive places - and even then its not usually as genuine as it once was.
My point being that 'so many people there' I think it relative to the vibe of the people, and not necessarily just place X with Y number of humans density... for example going to a comic-(like)-con these days with 'so many people' there is a totally different vibe than being at average mall (around my part of the country/world) with same number of people in similar spaces.
The Monoroeville Mall (made famous for its use as the setting for the original Dawn of the Dead movie) had a clock tower in the 1970s (since removed in one of its many renovations). You can see it in the final scene of the movie after the zombies have taken back the mall and are staggering around to the upbeat mall music.
