The Daily Mall Reader: Big Town Mall Coming Down

A daily dose of mall-related reading...

"Mall was 'the place to be'"
Long past its prime, Big Town coming down in Mesquite

The Dallas Morning News - Friday, July 28, 2006

(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.

Retro Mall Video: Columbia Mall (aka Avondale Mall) Demolition

Decatur, Georgia - March, 2007

The last Sears wall at the abandoned Columbia/Avondale Mall is razed to make way for a new Wal-Mart Supercenter in its stead--much to the dismay of many local residents (which you can read about in another Columbia Mall entry). Such a sad sight for anyone who's a vintage mall lover.

Note: This video is only part one of four. For your viewing convenience, I put them all on one page in a playlist at YouTube, if you'd like to go watch the rest after this one. Click here for the playlist.