Speaking of Dead Malls…

For those who, like me, are obsessed with modern ruins — especially of the sprawling, commercial variety — and their hidden histories and meanings, check out DeadMalls.com.

A reader and commenter on the site shares his own history with Lafayette Square Mall, a location about which I made an extensive post, yesterday.  Sounds like his experience growing up was similar to mine:

I remember Lafayette Square Mall being the place to be back in the day. When I was a child in the early 1990’s, my mother would take me to Lafayette Square to go shopping. Of all the malls, Lafayette Square was the most convenient. It is located 4 miles northwest of downtown Indianapolis on Lafayette Road. I say it was convenient because we did not have a car, and Lafayette Square had convenient bus service to the mall every 15-30 minutes. Because of its convenience we were avid shoppers there.

So what helped hurt Lafayette Square? The influx of more urban shoppers, as well as a new downtown mall, considered by many to be the best in America. Sales across the entire region that slowed through the 1990’s. Even though Lafayette Square is still near capacity in terms of its tenants and shoppers, the mall is destined to a fate similar to that of Eastgate. Unlike Lafayette Square, Washington Square and Glendale were both dying malls in the late 1990’s that re-emerged from the dead. Even today, Glendale, Washington Square, and Lafayette Square still do not have half the shoppers they had in the 1980’s, and so, they are destined for plywood.

deadmalls DOT com.

Ironically, I was turned onto the site’s existence by a manager at Lafayette Square who was trying to protect the mall’s reputation. I was trying to get permission to shoot on the property there, and was told I would only be allowed to do so if I were portraying the decaying mall in a favorable light. “There’s a site out there called DeadMalls.com that featured us, and it was pretty negative,” he said. “We obviously wouldn’t want you doing anything like that.”

Of course I went straight there, and it’s a great site.

DeadMalls points up a new documentary by Helene Klodawsky about malls and what they mean, called “Malls R Us.” Looks pretty fascinating (go here for the Web site).

In the meantime, here’s the trailer:

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