Love Dead Malls? Check out Dan Bell’s entire Dead Mall Series here : • Dead Mall Series Follow Dan : / thisisdanbell / thisisdanbell / thisisdanbell www.vine.co/ThisIsDanBell Photographed and Edited by Dan Bell
Attention! Completely remastered episodes of the Dead Mall Series are now being archived in 4K at ru-vid.com/show-UCfCM_TfrSDMkkMpKuLNWuXA. The remasters have gone through an extensive AI Enhancement process as well as proper sound mixing and colorization. This Dead Mall Series Remastered project has been made possible through viewer support on Patreon. Go over now and watch in glorious 4K. ENJOY!
Hi, I'm from Morgantown. Wanted to let you know, the restaurant with the facade was original in 1975 and called Lum's (possibly Lumh's). It was a family style restaurant until the mid 80s. It held a couple other restaurants very briefly. The buffet restaurant, not the Chinese buffet, was "Pizza Inn and in the early 90s "Pizza and Pasta by George". The BBQ place is relatively new. It was for decades the home of "Hot Sam's" pretzels. This mall was a big part of my childhoood. Thanks for documenting and being kind about or sad little mall.
Lum's became the Golden Ram for a few years after it went under. I was a young waiter there once. Good money actually, the mall was still doing fairly well in 86-87.
It reminded me of many of the midcentury buildings here in Southern California when I was growing up. The clean lines, large windows and flagstone walls resembled lots of schools, restaurants and banks I've seen over the years.
I've noticed that most of the viewers in the comments of these are usually older adults or curious foreigners... Am I the only teenager who likes these? I find it fascinating to see places like this.
The location with the interesting windows was definitely a Brooks clothing store. I worked at one in between college semesters one summer and cleaned a set just like that many times!
Ann Veal Nowadays the store entrances have to be grand looking to make you want to spend money there I guess, back then it was more about style and pizazz.
I was in 5th grade when the Mountaineer Mall opened in Oct. of 1975. It had everything, incl. a double movie theater, Pizza Inn, which later became Pizza and Pasta By George, which had an all-you-can-eat pizza and salad bar w/ dessert pizzas. There was a Wiener World, Cole's book store, Record Bar, Fashion Bug, Lum's restaurant, Hickory Farms, JoAnn Fabric, and Altmeyer's, as well as a terrific hardware store and Montgomery Ward, J. C. Penney, and Murphy's Mart, which later became Ame's and then WalMart. When the expansion took place in the late '80s, that expansion really didn't have hardly any time to "get off the ground" b/c the Morgantown Mall opened in Westover in Sept. 1990. The Mountaineer Mall started "dying" right then and there. Very sad. Wonderful place to grow up. My father enjoyed teaching a class there for mostly-retired people at the OLLI Center a few years ago.............terrific memories of a time that, unfortunately, we will never see again.
My grandfather sat on those benches many times when my grandparents took us to the mall. Always went to Montgomery wards first and down the mall. Thanks for uploading.
I'm from Morgantown and grew up going to that mall, I'm so used to seeing it that I tend to overlook the vintage beauty of it. I'm glad I found this video because I was able to see it through someone else's eyes! I was born in 87 and I was little when it was popular so I don't remember a whole lot of details. After the chain stores left, a lot of other stores came and went too, so it's hard for me to remember what the original stores were. I remember Montgomery Ward, it was at the end of the wing where the animal friends store is. The animal friends store used to be JoAnn Fabrics. There was also a dollar store and a Holiday Hair down that wing (and a little pretzel stand, Sam's Pretzels I think, and it was SO good). Gabriel Brother's was in front of all of the tables that are set up, and where they are set up is where Santa and the Easter Bunny would be during the holidays. To the right from all of the tables, that wing had Goodwill for a while and at the end was Wal-Mart. Mylan pharmaceuticals bought the Wal-Mart space, I don't know what they do there. At the bottom of the ramps, there was a hair salon, a mattress store and a shoe store. Outside there is still a Cato store open and I believe something for medical supplies is still there (oxygen, etc.). Teletech, a day care center and other businesses that I don't know are there too. I think if the senior center hadn't made this their home, the inside would most likely be closed down. I asked my mom about the Italian looking restaurant, I don't remember it ever being open, she said she can't remember what kind of restaurant it was but the original one closed for a long time and another opened but shut down pretty quickly. She said it's a really big and nice place inside.
So many dead malls would make for great school conversions with minimal rework. Same thing for Cloud Data Centers. Plenty of power coming into the buildings, plenty of AC/cooling, lots of areas for common offices/conference rooms. Sites could even be converted to conference centers for events.
You would have to rezone and update the entire mall. VERY expensive and you would still have to get the updates okayed by the city zoning council. Not easy at all. If it was doable affordably, it would be done. It's not.
debra donley Joplin turned an old anchor building in the Northpark Mall into a temporary high school following the 2011 tornado. If it can be done there, I am sure they can find a way to do it elsewhere.
School or housing facilities. Like halfway houses or economic housing for people who lost their houses with the housing bubble bursting, stuff like that.
The “subway thing” is called the PRT it is used to transport students between the three WVU campuses spread throughout Morgantown, I’m currently a student at WVU and I can personally attest to the PRT being unreliable but it’s kind of a symbol of our school so a lot of the students have a sort of love hate relationship with it. Also in that mural is a picture of Woodburn hall down in the front which is one of the main buildings on our downtown campus, it’s beautiful esp at night since they light it up!
Supposedly there are some malls that have been converted into a mixture of office space, gyms, restaurants, bars, theaters and other forms of entertainment.
the only place was the chinese restaurant. they would set up shop in our call center in this mall lol. they were too expensive. we had food machines in there to eat out of instead
The restaurant that you was wondering about it was called lum's .The bbq place used to be Hot Sams..Go to face book and type in....I Remember when Mountainer Mall had stores...The windows was a store called Brook's. I spent many of sat's there in the 80's can close my eyes and still see it like it was when I was a teenager...thanks for the video. :)
When Rome fell, viaducts, aqueducts, stadiums and forts were left to ruin. In Europe, hundreds of castles, churches and palaces crumbled when empires fell. Its only fitting that the fall of the American Empire will be dotted with the ruins of what defined America during its zenith, shopping malls
When Rome fell, the aqueducts, stadiums, and forts weren't "left to ruin." They were taken over by the people who occupied the territory, with the main difference being the loss of institutional engineering knowledge on how to construct them. America hasn't forgotten how to build malls.
John Jackson Demographics of places grow old and tend to change but younger people also move in to those places. Shopping habits of the middle class have changed and luxury stores make enough on mark up to survive the changes, for now.
I guess that might be because the dead malls never reveived any renovations so they still look like they are in the 80s or very early 90s at best. The well working malls probably all look pretty modern.
basically the baby boomer generation grew up the the suburbs which was good for malls back then. then they had kids, and the millennials moved to the city for school, but unlike their parents, never quite got as good paying jobs. so instead of settling down, having kids and moving back to the suburbs, they are staying in the city and the suburban malls are dying.
Most malls were still very healthy through the 90's, and most were still doing good to "ok" in the early 2000s. The internet killed a lot of malls. Half.com, eBay, and Amazon (just to name a few) made the malls obsolete for me. Two malls right up the street from me are still thriving though...Sears as an anchor killed some malls, as Sears has sucked for about 2 decades now...now JCPenny anchor malls are hurting because JCP sucks too, their quality is low and their prices are too high for what you get.
i am gonna agree with you on this one, there are a few really thriving malls near me now in Pittsburgh. but i don't go there because they don't have any stores that interest me.... all just over priced cloths. no cool stores anymore. The apple store single-handily saved SHV mall in Bethel Park. Stores like the WQED store, Natural Wounders , or heck even Spencer's are all gone. But if i want bath beeds or a trendy purse haha.
I was passing through Morgantown and visited this mall in august 2019. It actually has had several spaces converted into a fitness center, boxing school, and child care, as well as several multi-use community units. There were a few external retail slots as well. Good to see a reverse trend! I actually had been to this mall in the early 90s because I work out there for 18 months. It was all open, but very slow then.
Dan Bell, The restaurant with the brown wood & bricks with red & white checker designs that you thought was an Italian restaurant, in the Mountaineer mall was 'Lumes Restaurant', . It sold Burgers & Hot Dogs & Beer.
The Mountaineer Mall comments asked what the restaurant was at the entrance to the 75 section of the mall and it was LUMs Restaurant. The buffet style restaurant was originally a Pizza Inn (local not a chain) and converted to a buffet style restaurant later. As for the business that had the odd glass front, I believe it was called Brooks. It was a store for girls and ladies clothing. I bought many items from this store. Also the businesses that have taken over the anchor stores did bring in new restaurants to draw these folks into mall but for some reason didn't last. All closed except for the BBQ joint.
I worked at this mall from 1976 to 1978 at a store called “The Bottom Half.” It was a guys Levi and tees boutique-like store with cube spaces on the walls to stack Jean sizes. Also, the bbq place was a Hot Sam’s that sold soft pretzels & frozen cokes...LOVED those!!! The restaurant was a LUM’s (for sure!) originally, and across from it was a Pizza Inn and a huge “Weiner World.” A wasted big place for hotdogs! I think the fancy wood window place was a “Teeks” shoe store. They sold high priced shoes. Maybe a bookstore after I left in 1978. PRT is still there I think. It would go all the way to the Collusiem to downtown to campus’. I was barely 19 years. I’m 61 now. Good video but sad too.
To update, if no one else has: The mall is still doing quite well as far as occupancy for a dead mall. Obviously not as traditional mall stores, but there are several stores to shop in still. The shoe store with the exterior entrance in the "new" addition on the front of the mall is still going. There's a gym next to it and some other office based type businesses. Eloquence Antiques & Artisans (flea market) moved into the old Rex Appliance location on the front of the "new" addition section. It is quite large with everything from vintage glass and uranium glass (quite a selection) to records, furniture, seasonal stuff, clothing and even a fairly large toy selection, in addition to locally made goods. The local model railroaders association has moved into the old Lums/Golden Ram location at center court. One of the local animal friends organizations opened up a rather large thrift store there as well (Tues to Sat daytime hours), and there appears to be another thrift/flea market type store next to it. We were there last Sunday and a lot of the stuff, other than Eloquence, wasn't open. Spark science center/kids museum is still there. There appears to be some sort of day care center in the interior, as well as a church. Then of course the social security offices and numerous other businesses still have space in the mall. The large Elder Beerman store is still empty, as it appears the old Walmart building is as well now that Mylan has bailed out of Morgantown. I think the old JCPenny's/Gabes is vacant as well. So 3 of the 4 larges spaces are vacant. Oh, there's a kidney dialysis operation in part of the old Montgomery Wards. Still though, for a "dead mall" there's a lot going on up there and I would say more than 60% of the non-anchor spaces are rented. I think the telemarketing place is still in the old Montgomery Wards location, so that's one of the 4 anchors that isn't vacant. Spirit Halloween just opened again in the old stand alone David Weiss/Dunham's building outside of the mall, and that's been a regular seasonal tenant for a couple months out of the year for several years now that I can recall. With Eloquence, the shoe store, Animal Friends and now the Spirit store, it's sort of a destination again, as you can always find something you like in Eloquence at least. And now that it's fall, there's a stellar colorful view from the hill up there.
I found your channel last night while on my Xbox RU-vid . I was up till 2am watching dead mall vids and loving it. This by far is the best mall yet. Retail stores are in constant change . Updating all the time. To see a mall that is all original is unheard of. This mall brings me back. I wish I got video on the old Waterbury Connecticut mall before it was torn down. It was just like this all original till the early 2000s. I am planning a cross country trip next fall. Planning stops and stuff I always wanted to see. Looks like this among other dead malls will now be on my list. Thank u for documenting tease treasures because some day they will be gone. And to me the rarest thing is a vintage store that is truly vintage. The tile the racks the signs . u never see it because stores have to change with the times or get left behind. love your work keep it up.
Ah, yes. I remember when the security cameras one night captured a deer wandering into the parking lot and the owners of that Chinese restaurant ran out and bludgeoned it to death and drug it into the restaurant. When it ended up on the local news the owners swore they didn't serve it. Oddly enough the restaurant remained relatively popular.
i'm hooked dan...nothing is better than, after a long day of yardwork to sit sdown in front of the computer with a beer and watch these episodes...brings me back to the 70's...keep it up, you RULE!!
It's funny how you mentioned that you wished old malls would utilize the spaces for office use; my mother actually works for a school district set in a mall that she and my dad use to remember visiting as kids. And you can still actually make out the store windows and spaces. They didn't even change the restaurant facade and have been using it as the work cafeteria.
Hey Dan, I love your videos. One of the staples of old malls were movie theaters inside of them and fancy steak house restaurants (well to me as a kid they were fancy.) I miss those old malls. Keep up the great work.
The restaurant with the red awning was Lum's then a Golden Ram, it's been closed completely since the mid to late 80's, the other restaurant across from it was a Pizza Inn during the early 90's.
I wish I would have found your channel sooner! The place with the brick used to be a "Lum's" and later "The Golden Ram" (I may have that backwards). It's beautiful inside. It was definitely a pretty nice restaurant in the 70's. We have a small datacenter in the mall and if you ever find yourself in the area again, let me know, we'll get you inside the old restaurant! It's a very nice sight to see.
Nope you have it correct. It was Lum's when we moved to town in the early 80s, then I actually worked there as a waiter in the later 80s as The Golden Ram. Virtually unchanged from Lum's. And it hasn't been open since TGR, and remains pretty much the same.
"You're all wrong. It stands for People's Rail Trains" -- You're enhancing the wrongness! It's NOT a rail system and the cars run as independent single units, not as multiple-unit trains. The Morgantown PRT (Personal Rapid Transit) was built as a proof-of-concept under the auspices of the federal DOT and UMTA in the early 70s to connect distant parts of the WVU campus to each other and to downtown. It uses non-rail concrete guideways and steerable automated cars that run on rubber tires. Unlike most traditional rail transit, the station platforms are off-line, making direct non-stop trips between any two stations possible, which is the major point of PRT systems. It is still the only functional PRT system ever constructed in North America. The infrastructure and vehicles are far more massive than more recent PRT design proposals, none of which have yet been built. I photographed the heck out of it back in 2004 and the friendly and knowledgeable operations staff was kind enough to give me a tour of the control room and maintenance facilities. For those who think that other PRT systems exist, the Detroit DPM, Jacksonville Skyway, and Miami MetroMover are NOT PRTs, they are actually APMs (Automated People Movers) that stop at every station on the route. The More You Know...
I want that mall! I was born in 1975! That Malls was NEW when I was first born! LOL! It's like around what 40y old! I'm old! LOL! Dan Bell keep up your GREAT work! Aaron.
Hello Dan. So the restaurant in this mall was a York Steakhouse. I remember that place in the 80's. They had great food and you could get a steak dinner for under $4.00!!!
This is Dan Bell. Great video how many stores are left Dan bell the shopping center here in Canada has got the old back original entrance and hall left a reminder of what it looked like until the center was built
this is the old mall in my town. This mall was actually built on an old landfill site. The "Metro" you refer to is actually a shuttle car system that is used to transport people from campus to campus on WVU, since the college is pretty huge. It's called the PRT, or Personal Rapid Transit system. There are a huge number of very large, historic buildings on campus, and also entire sections of the town that are loaded with restored historic homes.
Jesus that music starting at 1:45 made me feel sad and I'm not even sure why. Not just sad, but really depressed. And yet I keep watching more and more of these.
It would be awesome if you did some of the dead malls here in Canada. The one here in my city, they mostly converted it into office space. There are still retail shops, but not many. There is just one anchor store that is still being use, but this mall is pretty much all office space and health unit facilities now :)
Used to LOVE going to George's Pizza and Pasta buffet back when I was a grad student at WVU in the early 1990's. The restaurant had great dessert pizza. Used to go once a week before doing my grocery shipping at the Giant Eagle and didn't have much of an interest in the Morgantown Mall, which was brand new.
If you're ever in Texas, visit the Valley View Center in Dallas. It's incredibly dead and supposedly going to be demolished within a year or so. It was originally anchored by Dillards, Macy's, JCPenney, Sears and AMC theater, but the only anchors left are Sears and the theater. Most of the mall is occupied by art galleries. It's fascinating and has three levels.
BraveFearless Swift .......I used to work @ the Valley View Mall in Dallas @ a really cool store called Art Explosion in the mid '80's and I lived on Preston Road, moved there to go to school @ Wade's College...I'm no longer in Dallas....it used to be very busy, enjoyed that mall
BraveFearless Swift The last Texas mall I visited was the Hulen Mall in Fort Worth back in March of 2004. That place was filled with choice high-end retail from corner to corner, but I saw very few people in there shopping. Compact, yet beautiful on the inside.
David Alan Goldberg Yess!!! I love Hulen, it's my go to mall! It underwent a huge renovation around 2011, and three restaurants have been built added right in front the mall's main entrance! It really has upped the traffic :)
Reminds me a lot of the Marshfield Mall in Wisconsin that I used to go to with my grandparents back in 1979 or 1980. Got my first Kenner Star Wars figure on one of those trips at either a Shopko or K-Mart. Love your work - these vids are the the cat's pajamas.
I love that they converted much of the retail space to meet community needs like business offices, the shelter store, an art gallery and the senior center. As someone who volunteers with seniors I really see the benefit of older adults with transportation concerns having access to places to shop, socialize and exercise outside of a one room senior center.
Wow! I'm from Morgantown and never new about this mall! That's awesome. At 3:05 you talk about the "subway" in the mural. That's the PRT (Personal Rapid Transport) system. It's a monorail which holds small cars that transport you from Evansdale to Downtown. It's an older system now, but still used all the time by students at WVU since the campus is spread so wide. Great video, love your channel!
I actually worked in those offices you were talking about. And yes we would go walk around the mall during break. I remember the first time I walked through there how fascinated I was by it. I still am today. Also Gabriel Bros was an anchor as well at some point in the 90s
Animal Friends Thrift Shop used to be Goodwill. I believe it relocated outside of the mall. Also I worked at Teletech in the early 2000's and some of us would walk in the mall during our breaks. It was dead back then too, but there were more eating establishments. Many people went over to WalMart on their breaks too. They had a Radio Grille (before they starting adding McDonalds and Subway). It relocated closer to the interstate.
I would go here as a kid when I visited my grandparents. I remember going to a toy store and a book store. Years after when Morgantown Mall took over and before the offices took over, the old people had taken over lol. They were always walking. Great for walking.
The mural at 2:58 depicting the metro system is accurate. It's called the Morgantown PRT (Personal Rapid Transportation) and is used primarily by us college students to get in between campuses here in MoTown and basically an every day mode of transportation. It's not very reliable but it gets the job done.
There actually is a metro system in Morgantown! It's called the PRT (personal rapid transit). It's a huge thing with the college kids. Used to travel between the various campuses across town.
This was one of the first places I went to when my family moved to West Virginia in the mid-90s; I was ten years old. I live in NYC now as an adult, and I was curious if there was any footage of what I thought of as the "bad mall" (compared with the Morgantown Mall, which itself had an air of a time capsule from earlier decades). It's so emblematic of personal feelings about the town and that time in my life that are hard to translate. And it's a trip seeing that it's still running.
There was one nice mall close to is. They took out the original floor and replaced it with ugly tile. They also covered up the big fountain and a small fountain. It is Collin Creek Mall, only Dillard's left. The other anchor stores are still there. Mall needs a better management team.
I saw a couple other comments on here that got me thinking. As a 70's child, I saw these malls bloom and grow. The fallout back then was the wasting of our urban centers. I grew up in Duluth, MN and even our downtown was cool back then. There were all kinds of stores and places to eat... and FIVE DEPARTMENT STORES!! As time went on, downtown just got emptier and emptier. Of the three malls in our area, one is going strong but the others are dying. The cool thing now is that downtown is having a renaissance... and the same thing is just starting to happen across the bay in downtown Superior, WI. I now live in a highrise in downtown Duluth. It's even awesome in the winter as our elevators open onto the Skywalk system. So, while seeing these malls die is a bit sad, the sadness is well worth it if it means our urban centers come back to life with small businesses.
Dan, to answer some of your questions and to add some more info. I grew up in this mall as my mother worked in the JCPenny's Hair Salon. My Jr. High school was just down the street and within walking distance. I would sometimes walk to the mall to meet my mom after school. The first restaurant you showed in the mall was a pizza place. Don't recall the exact name (Pizza Inn, maybe?) but my 13th birthday party was there. Then in the new section of the mall we had the rest of my party at Aladdin's Castle a video game spot. The place with the windows that you mentioned used to be a women's clothing store, mostly dresses. There also used to be a nice Chinese restaurant called the Red Rose. It wasn't a buffet and was a great place. My parents used to have lunch there often when my mom worked at the mall. You were right, it was a very busy mall when I was a kid in the 80's. I even had my first date at the cinemas there. The movie was The Hunt for Red October in 1990. The last that I was there a few years ago, the main anchor of the mall was TeleTec. A large telemarketing firm. It was fun seeing your video and showing my kids where I used to hang out. I have many memories in that mall! It was a shame that when the new mall opened all of the stores abandoned this mall for the new one.
The restaurant with the red roof was originally Lum's and then the Golden Ram. The mall housed a two theater cinema which sat across from the Pizza Inn. Other stores I remember were Weiner World, The Red Rose Chinese restaurant, Record Bar, Sweet William restaurant, Teek's Fine Shoes, Thrift Drug, Children's Palace, Radio Shack, Bally's Alladin's Castle Arcade, Pearl Vision, and Gordon's Jewelers. Ames took over the Murphy's stores before Walmart came to the mall. Walmart kept this mall going while it was here. There were still stores in the mall during its tenure there. They had actually planned on expanding to a supercenter, but because of Giant Eagle, there couldn't be another grocery store at the mall. Today much of the mall is occupied by Mylan offices and Teletech.
The 1987 addition was never filled. At the beginning it had a Stone & Thomas, which later became Elder Beerman, a Doctor Pet Store, Regis hair care, Cinnabon, and other stores which came and went.
The store with curve windoms was Walton Books. Also another malls have some curve windoms stores and another guy on did the same thing on his video with another mall.
Do you mean Walden Books? That's what our 1969 mall had. I thought it was a great bookstore at the time and always had good sale prices on decent books.
