Meet me by the fountain : an inside history of the mall / Alexandra Lange.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lange, Alexandra, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Shopping malls--United States--History.

Shopping malls.

Shopping centers--United States--History.

Shopping centers.

Shopping malls--Social aspects--United States--History.

Shopping malls--United States--Design and construction--History.

Shopping malls--Social aspects.

United States.

Genre:

History.

Informational works.

Physical Description:

310 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color) ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : Bloomsbury Publishing, 2022.

Summary:

An entertaining and evocative stroll through the rise, fall, and ongoing reinvention of malls, which proved to be a powerful draw for creative thinkers including Joan Didion, Ray Bradbury, and George Romero, chronicles how the design of these marketplacesplayed an integral role in cultural ascent.

"Few places have been as nostalgized, or as maligned, as malls. Since their birth in the 1950s, they have loomed large as temples of commerce, the agora of the suburbs. In their prime, they proved a powerful draw for creative thinkers such as Joan Didion, Ray Bradbury, and George Romero, who understood the mall's appeal as both critics and consumers. Yet today, amid the aftershocks of financial crises and a global pandemic, as well as the rise of online retail, the dystopian husk of an abandoned shopping center has become one of our era's defining images. Conventional wisdom holds that the mall is dead. But what was the mall, really? And have rumors of its demise been greatly exaggerated? In her acclaimed The Design of Childhood, Alexandra Lange uncovered the histories of toys, classrooms, and playgrounds. She now turns her sharp eye to another subject we only think we know. She chronicles postwar architects' and merchants' invention of the mall, revealing how the design of these marketplaces played an integral role in their cultural ascent. In Lange's perceptive account, the mall becomes newly strange and rich with contradiction: Malls are environments of both freedom and exclusion--of consumerism, but also of community. Meet Me by the Fountain is a highly entertaining and evocative promenade through the mall's story of rise, fall, and ongoing reinvention, for readers of any generation"-- Dust jacket.

Contents:

Introduction: Why we go to the mall

Every day will be a perfect shopping day

The garden

The mall and the public

Make shopping beside the point

Whose mall is it anyway?

Dawn of the Dead mall

The postapocalyptic mall

Conclusion: The mall abroad.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 267-297) and index.

Local Notes:

Athenaeum copy: Albert M. Greenfield Memorial Fund.

ISBN:

9781635576023

1635576024

OCLC:

1325579853