A few blocks from my house is the site of the old Winter Park Mall, now redeveloped as a mixed use development and known as Winter Park Village. My mother has stories of going to the old Winter Park Mall so looking around this blog that I found I decided to search for this old mall. The pictures I found I must admit my mothers stories did not give justice to. In the middle of the mall was this beautiful chalice shaped fountain over pouring with water on all sides.
What's amazing to me as I look at this picture is how retro and in style this fountain is. Sadly I assume that when the Winter Park Mall was transformed into its new state this along with all the other details of the original mall were destroyed.
As we grapple with what to do with the wasteland of dead malls in this country I hope that we don't forget that these malls were once stylish state of the art centers of action for communities.
According to Mark Dery on Design:Observer, Southdale, the world's first mall, had...
"a garden court with a café. And a fishpond. And brightly colored birds twittering in a 21-foot cage. Reporting on the opening, Architectural Record made it sound like the Platonic Ideal of Downtown — what downtown would be “if downtown weren’t so noisy and dirty and chaotic.” A town square in a bell jar: modern, orderly, spanking clean."
What a wonderful place, sadly often times these small pieces of beauty are overlooked once the mall begins to fail and soon the entire thing, both the ugly empty stores and the beautiful courtyards are bulldozed in the name of progress.
I think there is another way though, why can't we as a community decide on what pieces of a shopping center to keep. Just as this fountain in the Winter Park Mall could have been a connection for the new shopping area with its predecessor, many shopping centers have pieces that can and should be preserved. (An even more recent example is the auctioning off of Church Street Station in downtown Orlando. What once was the epicenter of all cultural activities within the city was literally ripped apart and sold off piece by piece. I have not heard where many of the pieces were sold too but I hope that even as Church Street Station is redeveloped its legacy continues through these icons now hopefully kept local but spread across the region.)
I view this as a way to keep in touch with recent history. Often times cities, such the one I live in Winter Park, have numerous efforts to preserve and showcase the older history of the community but let more recent yet equally as important historical buildings and icons disappear.
Sure the 60's and 70's wont go down in history as the greatest time in history for fashion or architecture but that doesn't mean we shouldn't appreciate what it is.
On a recent visit to a local history museum I noticed this first hand, there were numerous displays on the community from its founding till the 40's or so then very little mentioned on anything after that period yet the community itself had such a rich and diverse history since then. Why is there no mention of the Winter Park Mall in the history museum, no pictures of these beautiful features the mall had, its as though the city has had nothing happen since the 40's.
My fear is as we redevelop these failed experiments in social relations called malls that we may eventually forget what these areas started as, that they started as malls and were different in their very founding than other areas of the city. That is part of the history of the community, a part of the history I fear we may forget if we don't keep icons from that era.
I hope for a future where malls are the minority yet I fear for a future where malls are a forgotten piece of our rich history.
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Here is a very interesting looking movie about Malls and their social implications and meanings.
Have any of you seen this documentary?
1 comment:
I can't wait to see that film that you linked to, Malls R Us. Phoenix art museum is hosting a free screening of the film in February as part of it's Museum Events.
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