Woodfield Mall
Schaumburg, Illinois - circa 1970s
Here's a pretty sweet vintage Woodfield Mall multi-view postcard, showing 4 different interior court/anchor store views--Lord & Taylor, Marshall Field & Company, JCPenney, and Sears. This image comes courtesy of my fellow mallrat buddy, Mitch Glaser's, great Woodfield Mall Flickrset. (I sharpened it a bit and adjusted the colors and tonal balance a little.)
Mall history: 1971 - present
Developer: A. Alfred Taubman
Current website: here
Current aerial view
Info from Wikipedia
Previous entries: 1, 2, 3
posted by Keith @ 1/20/2007
18 Comments:
Please don't tell me that the block lettering "LORD & TAYLOR" is for real! What a distraction from the otherwise classy entryway. Oh well. They sure don't build them like this anymore!
I love this postcard! I was just at Woodfield the other day. This is great!
This is an awesome post card! I want the physical to scan in high quality. I heart Taubman Centers and Woodfield updates.
Another thing, gotta love that vintage JCPenney logo. Wait a minute... you can see that at just about every mall today. Except today, there's piles of dead bugs and things inside of them. I'll bet you can find one dead in there since 1977.
I was thinking the same thing about the JCPenney logo... seeing this makes me realize that it's pretty timeless in its appearance. It had a clean, contemporary look in the 1970s and doesn't look out of date now. The fact that it's simple (and you could say a bit boring) works in its favor. Makes me wonder who designed it. The Sears signage of the era, while equally simple, looks just plain old on a building now.
The JCPenney logo was designed by Unimark International, the company co-founded by Massimo Vignelli, who also redeigned the logo for Saks Fifth Avenue and the New York subway maps about the same time.
http://www.unimark-international.com/Clients1.html#clients1
Unimark is stuck in the 70's. And if I want to create a logo I'll do it too in MS Word using Arial and Arial Bold as my hallmark fonts. I suppose simple, boring, and timeless is JCP's apt motto for 30+ years now.
Nick, that was a tribute site for Unimark, which closed down in 1976.
JCPenney is pretty much the only client they had that's using the same logo, and its styling has changed subtly over the past 36 years.
Thanks for the link, Steven...tres chic.
Which Saks logo did Mr. Vignelli do for them? I did a little more digging around and was very, very pleased to find that Saks Fifth Avenue has officially moved back to the fancy, script logo!
Can't beat the classic SFA script.... glad it's coming back!
Mr. Vignelli did the 1973 script logo; the one that most Saks stores built before 1995 are signed with.
The Unimark approach to graphic design seems to be very similar to what was used in these earlier Taubman malls - like the vertical lettering on the obelisk at the information desks, and the logos. Obviously Unimark was on the leading edge of design and Tauban wanted to be first-rate.
I think the "Lord & Taylor" lettering was placed on the post card so that the name is easily readable. It was probably not on the storefront in reality.
I think that the block lettering "LORD & TAYLOR" was for real. I'll try to see if I have an old photo of that store entrance to verify that. This store, btw, was relocated to allow for the further expansion of that wing.
Rest In Piece, Marshall Fields!
Nothing much has changed about these storefronts! The Marshall Fields for instance still looks the same, although it's now a Macy's. The Lord & Taylor block letters are gone with new script lettering like on the sides of the wall there.
I worked in this mall around 1974-1976 at the Beer N' Brat restaurant and in Hickery Farms while I was going to college at Harper and later UW-Oshkosh. It was fun to see this postcard becuase I remember it looking that way. I live in Denver for the last 30 some years so have not seen new improved mall.
I spent one Winter in near by Northbrook while training at A C Neilsen in 1975. We used to spend our free time at the Mall. It was so big that there was ice skating, mini golf and a race car track in the basement. It always seemed to snow when we were there but I didn't care back then. Near by was McDonald's Hamberger University
Growing up in Milwaukee, WI during the 1970's my family and I would go on Saturday trips to northern Illinois, and no trip was complete without a 2 or 3 hour stop at Woodfield Mall, lunch at the McDonald's on the mid level, a couple trips down the slide at the mid level, and a stop at the candy shop that was on the second level near Sears. Brings back powerful memories. I have to make a trip down to Woodfield Mall again sometime.
Post a Comment
<< Home