Northway Mall - Birdcage
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania - circa '60s or '70s
Here's a cool shot of the birdcage at the old Northway Mall! Not quite as ornate a setup as I've seen at other shopping malls back in the day, but I guess it got the job done anyway. (photo courtesy The Shoppes at Northway)
I like the muted colors, tone, and lighting captured in this shot. A certain overall tonal balance here that really speaks to me for whatever reason.
Mall history: 1962 - present
Current website: here
Info from Wikipedia
Current aerial view
Previous entries: 1
posted by Keith @ 8/07/2006
8 Comments:
I'm digging the fancy condominiums at the top.
Squawking birds was always one of my classic "sounds of mall." Seems kinda cruel these days, but it was a lot of fun as a kid.
Scott
I don't like the color of the cage, but the fact that it's a giant birdcage in the middle of the mall cancels that out and makes it cool.
....couldn't do that now because of a million public health hazards!! Jus think of all those "bird flu" scares that would incite. We've really evolved into a bunch of "scardy cats" haven't we?
Kinney (owned then by F.W. Woolworth Co.), as well as rival chain Thom McAn (then under the Melville umbrella of various mall names, including Chess King and Kay-Bee Toys), were very prominent through the late 1980s before 'lower quality' chains like Payless became the norm. Couldn't go to a mall without seeing one or the other, or both.
I'm not sure when they ditched the whole idea of having birdcages in enclosed malls, but it had to of been before my time. None of the malls I ever visited in my neck of the woods in the early 1980s had them.
I still think this is the ugliest mall birdcage I've ever seen a photo of. I thought they were all supposed to be elegant like the Cherry Hill ones!
The birdcage was there at least until late 80s or early 90s. I remember it as a very young kid (maybe 3 or 4) and wasn't born until 1985. I also have a faint recollection of one of the birds escaping somehow when workers were attending to the cage, and seeing them try to corner the thing in one of the corridors.
Wow, that photo brings back memories. I spend hours hanging out by the bird cage and the Walden books in the mall. That was pre-Ross Park days.
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