The Fashion Center Mall (Paramus)
Paramus, New Jersey - circa 1968
From a vintage postcard comes this Artist's conception drawing of the old B. Altman & Co. anchor store at the Paramus Fashion Center mall. Many thanks to, Charles Freericks, for this great submission! He added:
"Although everything I find on the web calls this the Paramus Fashion Center today, when I was a kid it was called the Ridgewood Fashion Center (as Ridgewood is a much more upscale town). And it was on Ridgewood Avenue, in Paramus.See the resource articles below for more information on this mall.
I have great memories of the deep burgandy carpet and the fantastic fountain in the center. I wish there was a postcard of the whole mall, not just the Altman's. There's a Lord & Taylor's on the other side, that's still there.
The mall, which was supposed to be something like Fifth Avenue in the suburbs, is now all cut up into separate stores (the inner mall grand hall is mostly gone).
A few years after the mall was built, they built a Best & Company in the parking lot, which sadly bankrupted Best & Company and put the whole chain out of business."
Mall history: 1967 - '90s (dead/redeveloped)
Current website: n/a
Info from Wikipedia
Current aerial view
Resource articles: 1, 2, 3
Previous entries: none
posted by Keith @ 10/06/2006
7 Comments:
I shopped at the Fashion Center mall all the time as a teen! Good memories.
Sadly the mall started to die in the late 80's, I worked there from 84 to 86, when B Altman left all the tenants all pulled out but Lord and Taylor which has a 99 year lease.
B Altman's was a great store...they had an incredible Christmas department, but I was more partial to the Altman's in Short Hills (which is now at the location of the Neiman Marcus/Nordstrom wing)
On Fashion Center, as the 80s came about, the mall sadly didn't have a chance...true, the Ramsey/Mahwah and Northern Bergen folks prefer that area of Paramus shopping b/c 17 is such a horrible highway and traveling those extra 4 miles to GS Plaza is a real pain. Due to its lack of available land, close proximity to Garden State Plaza and even closer proximity to Paramus Park and downtown Ridgewood, Fashion Center had fierce competition and with the closing of Altman's, its demise came about.
The Fashion Center as we knew it will be missed.
I used to love B. Altman, it had the best christmas department. Sorry to see it fade into retail history
Lol. Yeah I noticed your great recent coverage of same--and I linked to it, in fact, in the resource links section in my entry.
Actually, I was sent this postcard a while ago, but I'm backlogged so it took me a bit to finally get to it.
Thanks for the comments, guys!
Live near by since it opened even worked at Altmans in 1980-82. When we were kids we used to get chased out just for being there. The Detached dept store? that became Altmans furniture now Toys r Us had a glass tube elevator in the center of the store. We used to ride up and down all the time till the tossed us. I even have memories of a Rock concert in the parking lot by were Brooks brother/Kaliks in that late 60's early 70'. But other than that is was always a stuffy old folks mall.
The mall opened in 1967, so I suspect the postcard is from before that.
I loved that mall. It was a real classy operation in it's day. High-end stores and never too crowded.
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