I thought I would swing by the “Crossings at Northwest,” or what I called Zombie Northwest Plaza, which apparently was the largest outdoor mall in the United State when it opened in January 24, 1966. Supposedly. The last time I was by was back in 2017. The Famous Barr, designed by Raymond Loewy and William Smith (who also apparently designed the South County one, but I suspect and propose here that William Gruen played a much greater hand in the conceptualization of the dome-crowned department store in St. Louis), was the sixth in the May Department Stores’ constellation of retail planets.

The office building has changed little in appearance; it was completed later and the anchor department stores opened earlier than the rest of the mall. Roosevelt Savings and Loan was based in the office tower when it first opened.

The Scruggs, Vandervoorts and Barney’s opened the same day as Famous Barr at 9:30 AM. The mall was developed by Milton and Louis Zorensky, who were prolific shopping center builders. With 117 acre and 7,000 parking spaces, Northwest Plaza was certainly built to be huge. Lawrence Halprin of San Francisco was the landscape architect with sculptures by Aristides Demetrios from the same city. Richard Hafner and Herbert Wahlmann were the architects for the mall and Millstone Co. were the general contractors.

It is hard not to feel sad that everything built just shy of sixty years ago is almost completely gone. All that optimism has sort of just fizzled out.

But hey! We got a Menard’s!