Vintage Park City Center Mall
Lancaster, Pennsylvania - circa 1970s
The Park City Center back in the 1970s, as seen from the mall's parking lot (where's there's some pretty groovy cars, too). Among the mall's current anchor/major store lineup are: JCPenney, Sears, H&M, The Bon-Ton, Boscov's, and Kohl's. Check the "previous entries" below for a lot of other great Park City Center photos as well as more historical background info and great reader memories.
Mall history: 1972 - present
Current website: here
Info from Wikipedia
Current aerial view
Previous entries: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Labels: 1970s, Lancaster, Park City Center, Pennsylvania
posted by Keith @ 5/25/2007
21 Comments:
It's funny how the mall's name fit's so well with this picture.
hehe it's a city of parking lots.
Where you park a lot,therefore it's "Park City"! get it?
pretty as a park, big as a city. That was their jingle.
That's the only picture of a Watt & Stand department store I've ever seen.
Kudos, what a great find!
Just for an update, it's now a Bon-Ton and they're actually extending the first floor out further near the left side of the building(as it appears in the picture) Indeed, the entire mall is getting a face-lift(yeah, it's sad, I know) and the historic Watt & Shand building in downtown Lancaster(the brand pictured) is being torn down. Truly sad times for retro retail in PA.
What kind of a department store was Watt and Stand?
Watt and Shand was a local department store - pretty standard - like Bon-Ton or the like. If memory serves me correctly, there were only two of them. One was in Downtown Lancaster, and one at Park City.
I remember Park City's later jingle: Make a day of it - Park City!
There's an escalator outside this store that goes straight to the 2nd floor - just up, though. Don't see that too often anymore.
Thanks for the info for the non-familairs like myself!
Watt & Shand was a local department store, with two locations. One downtown, on Penn Square in Lancaster, and the other at Park City. I used to work in the men's department downtown. It began in 1878, and was sold to Bon Ton in 1992. Bon Ton closed the downtown store a couple of years later, but the Park City location is one of their busiest locations.
Watt & Shand was a real department store, not just one that sold clothes and cosmetics. You could buy major appliances there and televisions. There was a toy department, a book department, a notions department where you could buy sewing items, a furniture department, etc. The downtown store had old fashioned elevators that required elevator operators.
Now the facade of the downtown store remains. There is a hotel and convention center being built where the downtown store once stood
This blog shut down one day after my son was born. Is that an omen?
My Dad knew one of the guys that helped get Park City off the ground. I got to be there at the ground breaking and seeing the main building go up, little by little. Now, when I come home to visit, I am always interested to see what has disappeared and what has been added.
When it opened, Park City had an Ice Skating rink on the lower level of the JCPenny "wing" as you call them.
The Mall is shaped like a wheel, with 8 spokes - four are major spokes leading to the anchor stores. The other four are minor with no anchor store.
Anyway, the skating rink was shaped like a standard hockey rink, but was undersized, and had no locker rooms if I recall correctly. I played in the boys league there in 1972-73.
Shoppers above in the JCPenny wing could peer down from directly above the ice through two large windows.
That JCPenny wing included a large Kinney Shoes and a Thom Mcann Shoes directly across from each other.
Other stores I recall were the first Spencer Gifts I ever saw, and "Orange Julius," and a "Bavarian Pretzel Hut."
In the very center of the mall was a huge fountain, set off by a wildly imaginative copper sculpture created by a local artist who I believe was named Stan Lipman. If I am getting his surname wrong, please someone correct me.
Does anyone remember the name of the Chinese restaurant that used to be in the mall back in the 70's?
The Chinese Restaurant was the Jade Tiki Inn
Uh, sorry anonymous, that slogan was: "Big enough to be a city, nice enough to be a park -- Park City."
The center sculpture in Park City's fountain was indeed created by my father, Stan Lipman in the fall of 1971.
It was influenced by sculpture he'd seen in Los Angeles during his stay there in the summer of '71.
The fountain made the entire mall VERY noisy, but the sculpture was indeed beautiful. Where is is now??!?
-Michael Lipman
Thanks for the info for the non-familairs like myself!
I've walked past there a million times and never realized!
Does anyone remember the names of the restaurant outside the mall before Manheim Pike? Some on another site have mentioned Pappy's Pizza and Sgt. Peppers and Starfish Grill. I was thinking there was another name and it had the word Grill in it. They also mentioned a fish tank in it.
I also played ice hockey in the rink on the lower level in the 72-73 league. I rented the ice many times for games with my Manheim Township High School friends, and I have photos of this. This was the first and only rink in Lancaster County in the 1970's, unless you count a small postage stamp sized square at the Sheraton on Route 272 North up near Stevens, PA.
Definitely Pappy's Pizza. My mom and I both got food poisoning there from (I believe) sausage pizza in 1980.
i saw Tiffany on her mall tour there. when she was done I met in the back of Waldenbooks and let he go to town on my knob. then i glazed that dirty slut like a donut. now i know why she had number 1 hits
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