Luton, England - circa 1970s
Behold, the striking Arndale - Luton shopping centre (now called The Mall Arndale Luton). From Wikipedia:
"Arndale Centres are a large chain of shopping centres in the United Kingdom - they were the first "American-style" malls to be constructed in the UK."Be sure and check out the 4th resource link below for a neat "virtual" look at this mall. Tip: you can control the camera in the topmost view window.
Mall history: 1972 - present
Current website: here
Info from Wikipedia
Resource articles: 1, 2, 3, 4
Previous entries: none
Seeing pics like this give me the notiion that the concept of an indoor shopping mall wasn't so much an American thing if other countries jumped onto the bandwagon early on as well.
ReplyDeleteIntriguing mall. Loved the Webcam. I circled around and around. I noticed that a number of lights are either off or burned out. Seems like only every third light is on. Now why would someone want to make the mall appear darker? I already found it odd that in overcast England, there hardly is any natural lighting in this mall. Very odd. Not like any of the other UK malls I've seen.
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Their web site is very cool. The multiple 360 views are just great.
ReplyDeleteInteresting to see the UK versions of our stores like footlocker
... and you get cornered by some drunken greengrocer from Luton with an Instamatic camera and Dr. Scholl's sandals and last Tuesday’s Daily Express and he drones on and on about how Mr. Smith should be running this country and how many languages Enoch Powell can speak and then he throws up over the Cuba Libres ...
ReplyDeleteI visited this mall today, as they have a very good shoppers' creche which agreed to accept our 2 year old twins. There is probably no other reason to visit! There is some natural light via the roof, but I'm not sure if this was added during a makeover. This was done in 1995 to Brent Cross which opened in 1976, again with no natural light. A very interesting mall which opened in 1974 was Weston Favell Shopping Centre in Northampton. This has a series of barrel vaulted roofs of various lengths which allow light in at each end of the barrels. This link has photos showing the mall as it was at opening and as it is now (select "Then and Now"): http://www.westonfavellshopping.com/page/gallery . I attended the opening of this mall in 1974 (I was 4 years old at the time!)
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