Scenes from a Mall

Yesterday when I picked Maria up from school her teacher excitedly told me that Maria had used the potty ALL DAY!  (Hoo-freakin’-Ray!)

Mall Scene 1962

So, after she ate dinner, I took Maria over to Macy’s to buy some underpants.  Maria was naturally confused as to how we could go to “Macy’s” and not bump into anyone named Macy.  The whole time we were there she wondered aloud where Macy was.  She would say things like, “We HAVE to find Macy.”  Um, we never found her (but I was ever so glad we weren't at this store). 

How did it happen that every department store is now a Macy’s?  Even Marshall Fields, so highly steeped in history and tradition, is now Macy’s.  My neighborhood Macy’s used to be an L.S. Ayres, and then it became Lazarus until Lazarus was absorbed into Macy’s.  And it is one of the older department store buildings in Indianapolis, an original anchor to the Glendale Shopping Center, built in 1958.  (Glendale was a "shopping center" and then a "mall," and now it is undergoing major renovations in order to become "Glendale Town Center").  So, we made the three-block trek to Macy’s went up to the Girls’ Department and purchased a mass of underpants.  As we made our way out, I stopped and looked at various things and the scattered sales clerks seemed surprised if not frightened by our presence.  Then, I looked around and realized we were the only customers in the store!  Can you believe it?  That is just sad.

I have such fondness, not for Macy’s, but for this particular department store building because, throughout all of Glendale Shopping Center's changes, it has been relatively preserved.  Before our downtown mall opened, Glendale was the closest place to shop for downtown denizens like me.  In addition to what is now Macy’s, there was a Lazarus (formerly William H. Block’s), The Gap, The Limited, Express, Victoria’s Secret, Casual Corner, Paul Harris and one of only two Hot Sam’s in town (Sal-oot!).  This store has the aura of an old timey department store where ladies shopped carrying pocket books instead of “hobo bags.” Oh!  And it probably had a candy counter, back when many department stores had such things.  - - Oh man, how I loved the department store candy counter when I was a kid.  My mom would buy me exactly one piece of candy, but it was always a VERY good piece of candy.

My generation has seen shopping centers go from open-air to enclosed and now back to open-air.  Out of a sense of nostalgia and an appreciation for aesthetics, I’m glad to see the open-air shopping center coming back into vogue, but sad to see the continuing trend of tearing down to build anew –or building anew and just leaving the old businesses and buildings to crumble - in stead of investing in our current structures.

Our 11-year-old downtown mall includes the historic building space once occupied by the downtown location of L.S. Ayres (built in 1905), but it is just the exterior.  The interior was pretty much gutted, there is no sense of the original store.  When the downtown mall opened, Glendale became sort of geographically sandwiched between the sparkly new mall and the stylish Fashion Mall.  So business suffered, tenants pulled out and it has gone through various reincarnations in attempt to breathe new life back into the mall.  This latest one seems to be a “last hope” sort of endeavor.  I think they’re on the right track and I hope for its great success.  Not only because it affects my property value, but because there still is that one department store, that connection to the past, that one foot in the history of the place that makes it so much more authentic than any old mega mall.  I would hate to see it left to crumble.