It had been awhile since I’d checked in at the site of the former River Roads Mall, and the contrast between 1962 and 2025 cannot be greater.
But perhaps it also reflects the changing pattern of suburban shopping; large, anchor-based shopping centers are being demolished and replaced with single parcel stores, each with their own parking lots.
Much of the old mall property is being replaced with apartments, as well, and I think that some of it is for senior housing.
Big Modernist department stores are really going the way of the dodo, and I can’t think of the last time one was built outside of the Galleria, and that one just went out of business!
It’s interesting to think how dramatic the setting has changed for these houses directly across from the mall’s ring road over the last eighty years.
Once upon a time one would get dressed up to go buy quality clothing at a classy department store. Where as now one rolls out of a weed smoke-filled sedan in pajama pants to purchase Takis from the Dollar Tree. Changing pattern of suburban shopping indeed!
It’s called ‘late stage Capitalism’.
In the late 1960’s Riverroads was to place to hang on Saturdays for young teens. Levi’s with frayed hems, white buttoned down Oxford shirt, yellow London Fog jacket or a wool navy CPO, cordovan Bass Weejuns or Baker’s fakers and a monogrammed Villager or a Baker’s faker was di rigueur dress.
Pizza by the slice from Woolworth’s, Spencer’s Gifts, Foxmoor, sewing lessons at Singer, Hopper Furs, beautiful clothes at Stix, Baer & Fuller. . .