Midtown Plaza Mall
Rochester, New York - circa 1964
The swanky sidewalk cafe inside Midtown Plaza mall around 1964, complete with its own mini fountain in the center. You can catch a couple of very quick glimpses of the cafe at around the 4 minute mark of the Midtown Plaza video I posted a while back.
Mall history: 1961 - present
Architect: Victor Gruen
Current website: here
Info from Wikipedia
Current aerial view
Previous entries: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
posted by Keith @ 1/20/2007
3 Comments:
So refreshingly elegant!
Just when I thought Midtown couldn't get more perfect...
Look at the background...That's one of the many mall entrances to McCurdy's, Rochester's last family owned department store! McCurdy's was one of the initial developers of Midtown, which was built around it's downtown Rochester store in the early 1960s. McCurdy's was a traditional, family style American department store. It wasn't as "exclusive" as it's glitzy competitor, Sibley's, which was directly across the street. But McCurdy's had many unique and exclusive departments such as a pet shop, 4 different restaurants (The Oak Room Men's Grill, The Garden Room, The Koffee Klatch, and The Jet Terrace Cafe), and a bakery which was one of the best in Rochester. Their cakes were the best! McCurdy's continued to survive into the 1990s, even as the venerable Sibley's, owned by May Company, closed the landmark downtown store, and was horribly merged into the bland Kaufmann's chain. I believe it was 1994 when McCurdy's was purchased by May, and all of the stores in the chain were liquidated.
By the way, Midtown was designed by Victor Gruen, same visionary who designed Southdale Center in Minnesota.
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