"Mall was 'the place to be'"
Long past its prime, Big Town coming down in Mesquite
Long past its prime, Big Town coming down in Mesquite
(Excerpt) MESQUITE – Big Town was big news.The first enclosed and air-conditioned shopping mall in the Southwest, the 77 ½-acre "City of Shops," drew crowds too big to count when it opened on a Thursday in late February 1959.
The Mesquite icon boasted not only a shopping utopia, but a small amusement park and a cartoon theater for kids. The Dallas Morning News ran a 24-page section on the opening, making that day's edition the largest weekday publication of the newspaper to date.
But through the decades, the crowds that once formed human traffic jams thinned to clusters of bargain shoppers and strings of mall walkers. Eventually, it attracted more folks thrilled to sneak inside an abandoned mall for snapshots of its morgue-like corridors than consumers ready to open their wallets at the remaining stores. When demolition crews began knocking down the peripheral walls late last week, it was a formality for a destination long ago declared dead.
Read the full article here.
'"Almost none of the shopping centers my dad built are still around in their original form," she said. "But I'm always sad to see them go away."'
ReplyDeleteIndeed it is quite sad.
Why...von Frellick! The Cindy City guy! Shame both his malls went the way of the dinosaurs...
ReplyDelete