Janet Middlebrooks and her sister-in-law were always trying to diet, so when they met for weekly excursions at Harundale Mall half a century ago, they always ordered the Waldorf salad at the upstairs cafeteria.
From the get-go, Middlebrooks, now 81, was a devotee of the Glen Burnie shopping center, the first enclosed mall east of the Mississippi. She saw the governor cut the ribbon at the mobbed opening, bought groceries and clothes, and occasionally participated in evening square-dancing demonstrations. Her son, now an Anne Arundel County councilman, had an after-school job at the mall's leather store. And when her husband wanted to buy her a gift he would head to Hochschild Kohn, the anchor department store, where the sales girls - as Middlebrooks calls them - knew her size and taste.
"It was a family place," Middlebrooks said. "I just really miss it."
Now just about all that remains of the original mall, which opened to much fanfare 50 years ago, is a gray rock that pays tribute to the founders and nods at what once was.
"Harundale Mall," the engraving reads. "Opened: October 1, 1958."
The handiwork of developer James Rouse - the utopian thinker who went on to plan such projects as Columbia and Baltimore's Harborplace - the mall fell victim to changing consumer tastes, lifestyles and demographics. In 1999, it was demolished and replaced with a strip shopping center that's all but indistinguishable from thousands of others with drive-through banks and vast parking lots. Renamed Harundale Plaza, the center's continuing evolution is emblematic of what is happening around the country to the old-fashioned, enclosed malls that used to be the toast of the lunching, browsing, shopping set.
"My God, I thought it was older than that," said Francis T. Taliaferro, 86, an original architect, after learning that the mall would have celebrated its 50th birthday this week.
It certainly can feel that way, given the changing fortunes of enclosed malls, which flourished into the early 1990s, but now are on the outs.
None is under construction right now, said Erin Hershkowitz, a spokeswoman for the International Council of Shopping Centers, a New York-based trade association. In their stead, developers are building big-box centers, strip malls and so-called "lifestyle centers" - inside-out malls with movie centers, restaurants and stores along a main street. Perhaps the biggest trend of the moment is walkable, mixed-use complexes with housing, offices, retail, public space, open-air and civic activities, said Ed McMahon, senior resident fellow for sustainable development at the Urban Land Institute in Washington. Almost 200 such town-center style developments are currently being built around the country, he said.
