Pizitz at Five Points West Mall
Birmingham, Alabama - circa 1970
Glitzy entrance to the Pizitz department store inside the old (now defunct) Five Points West Mall.
Hard to add much solid mall detail for this one at the end like I usually do, as, according to Birmingham Rewound, this was really just a mini-mall addition constructed around 1969-70, directly behind the long-standing Five Points West shopping center (aka "Shopping City"), that lasted barely a decade and only had one major anchor--this Pizitz store. So not really a traditional kind of shopping mall here. (Read more of its history here.)
Still, mini-mall or not (cue Dr. Evil: "We shall call it... mini-mall"), I certainly love the small slice of retro heaven seen in this photograph. The store logo is especially nice!
(Study image courtesy of Birmingham Rewound, a fantastic nostalgia site!)
posted by Keith @ 10/28/2006
5 Comments:
That Pizitz font has a lot of pizazz!!!
I'd like to buy a Z! Say it, don't spray it! :)
Scott
Gotta love that logo for sure...and the rather cool department store name. It sounds so contemporary for an old-line department store. There is another photo of a Pizitz store in Huntsville that was published on the ICSC site about Parkway Place Mall.
Pizitz was one of the 'Ham's big three also including Loveman's of Alabama and Parisian. It was bought out by Brad Martin in his expansion of McRae's (now Belk) in 1986. Pizitz anchored Riverchase Galleria early on, and the family still owns the leases to all of their original stores. Those leases led to a big lawsuit with Saks, and according to Wikipedia, led to a rumor that the chain was going to resurface.
McRae's did buy Pizitz in 1986 which was about 7 years before Brad Martin and Proffitt's had anything to do with McRae's.
I worked at a radio station in that mall in the 80’s. It was upstairs near the Pizitz. Originally WBUL, it was WAYE (am 1220) when I was there.
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