The restaurant you went into first is the pub they actually moved across town to the east side near shopping center named eastchase. The old clock used to be in downtown Montgomery at a bank, its from the 1800s. I took some photos from the doors before in the past for my instagram but man kinda jealous you guys got to go inside! Glad to see it though used to go here as a kid a lot. My dad used to run a ruby tuesdays that used to be inside when I was a baby, which I think is actually the blown out restaurant you guys went into. Great video! Oh yea what was the actual final straw for the mall wasn't all the stores closing but a EF1 tornado hit the building and caused water damage and it was the last straw for them to just call it quits!
@@RangerRickTV To add to the Clock info: That's actually a replica of the clock in downtown Montgomery, made from the same company that did the original with the same molds! So while a replica, it's almost like a direct copy made by the same people- Well... most likely their families. With how old that original clock was.
@@paulzimmerman6058 It was successful for a time, however the surrounding neighborhood went into decline and a newer mall (Eastchase) opened up nearer to the affluent neighborhoods.
This is probably the best Mall adventure I've ever seen! Zero vandalism and just natural decay! So nice to see something not destroyed by human hands. What exactly is still going on in this old Mall to have security cameras and such still working?
I grew up an hour south of Montgomery but my dad live there until 2004 so roughly until I was 9. He use to take me to that mall every Saturday to the Arcade when I would be up visiting, then back then Chuck E Cheese was open across the road. I’m talking 2001-2004 ish. Good memories
The door being open like that was a sign. You just can't pass up an opportunity to get into a legendary mall like this one. It is about time this place gets documented before it is too far gone. Well done Rick!!!!
I used to live nearby and went to this mall every saturday and played in the arcade. A few facts, the mall was expanded in the late 80's, they added a back wing to it. That clock is a newer addition, it used to be a Merry-Go-Round, then they took that out and put a fountain. The clock was way later. That resturant you went into in the beginning was also a newer addition I think, I don't remember that one. This mall started dying about 1990, stores started leaving then. They used the newest back wing for Sheriff offices then, the rest of the mall was abandoned. It's sad to see, but the neighborhood got rough with riffraff and people just went to Eastdale mall with the ice skating rink in the middle.
Wow! this was fun to watch. Keep up the great work! The Montgomery mall opened in 1967. There were plans to turn the food court and main atrium into a student run farmers market. and the old retail shops would hold classrooms with private instructors who could teach everything from music lessons, to second languages, to culinary arts. Buses would bring students in from other schools for those lessons.
I'm used to seeing dead/abandoned malls in Ohio/Pennsylvania/Kentucky region. They are dreadful. Amazing there is not more vandalism here. Nice job capturing this.
I grew up in Denver and our dead malls got demolished and new spaces were built. There’s not many photos left and definitely not much video of our old hang out spots
I got my first Job here 1999/2000 worked at the Great American Cookie Co. This mall was so freaking nice back then! The last year the Mall was over 90% occupied was 2001. I left in 2003 and it was around 75% occupied and going down quick. Lots of crimes and gang activity going on in the Mall. Crazy how in just a couple years time it got so bad. By 2006 it was basically dead. Last time I visited there was only one anchor store open and maybe 5 stores open on the inside and one restaurant open in the food court.
6:08 sensors are footfall counters. They count the number of people flowing through the doors. Retailers, malls, shopping centres use these for a variety of reasons, including attracting tenants, rent setting and to plan services, events etc - such as big sales events - from an era when centre management would know the number of visitors hour by hour.
You’re correct. Mall was almost completely renovated in late 80s. The original flooring was large diamond ♦️ shaped tiles-slate probably-huge! I was around back in the 70s in its heyday and loved jumping diamond to diamond.
It is surprising to see how "well" preserved this mall is, I mean, leaving aside the fact that it was abandoned for more than a decade, it still transports you to the old days. I am from a country that does not suffer from that massive wave of abandonment of shopping centers that there is in the United States, and to be honest, it makes me sad to see constructions like these being abandoned when if the circumstances were different, it would still be open. Good video!
This is in my hometown! I remember coming here as a little kid, and I mean little. We'd see the mall Santa here... To me? He was THE Santa Claus. He was such a loving and gentle person. Just a heart full of joy, and he loved everyone. Sadly, he ended up getting mugged there in town at some point, but he still kept being Santa despite it all. He'd do private gatherings more than the mall outings. When my mom was working at the new Sams club, they had a Christmas party right before the new building opened, and they hired him to come for the kids and take photos with everyone. I was so dang happy to see him again. He was our family Santa, if that makes any sense. While he's passed on now... Those memories will live with me 'till my dying days. And this was where I met him. This place is special to me, and it's sad to see it in such a state but also strangely beautiful. So many good memories I could share here, even if I have far more at Eastdale, which is now starting to head in the same direction as Montgomery Mall did. Also, that little benched area around 24:10 ? That was, indeed, a play area with a bunch of padded playground stuff the kids could climb and play on. I think you spotted them in one of the abandoned stores. Must've moved them out of the way for storage... I hope they save them! Since the Montgomery Zoo was the one who funded the play area, I'd love if the Zoo bought them back and reused them there.
All the memories here. I was just thinking about the singing reindeer heads that were near the cookie store downstairs as you exited during the Christmas season .. we would go once a month because we lived about 45 min away (my granny and my mom and they drug me along.. I didn’t want to go at all because I’ve always hated shopping) BUT the memories of all the things that I saw and the time with my mom and grandma did become significant .. I wish I could go back.
The first restaurant y'all go into was called The Pub.. the last one, Harper's, was once a Ruby Tuesday and turned into one of the Community College's cooking kitchen for their culinary school. I remember when it was just Montgomery Fair and JC Penny. Thank you for letting us glimpse into the past.
Hey Rick glad you and chuck got out of there knowing you set a motion detector off. The floor Where that green stuff on the floor it looked Pretty slippery this was a cool video.
Great video. I love the aesthetics of this mall so amazing 😍. Thanks for taking a risk and explore it! I think because the police station is in the same building many people stay away from here.
You are so right RanhgerRick. Were I live in Ontario, Canada (Brampton), the city council is planning to have a perfectly good shopping mall (Shoppers World Brampton) which is not experiencing any problems in terms of occupancy demolished to make way for a mixed use zone (residential/commercial) and half of it's tourist designated Bramalea City Centre for a mixed use zone (commercial/residential) which undoubtedly cause the BCC to lose it's tourist and statutory holiday designation.
It's really nice to see a mall with no vandalism. The natural decay looked really cool. I haven't seen a Steve and Barry's store in forever. Our mall had one but it went out of business many years ago. I was amazed how the plants were growing on the floor but not in the planters. Your photos at the end of the video are really good.
This mall was renovated in the late 80s or early 90s. I remember bits and pieces of the renovations taking place while performing a Christmas program with my class.
I love the clock. We have a very old one downtown Indianapolis. The fountain is cool would be neat at an estate in the garden. It's so sad to see these malls rot away .I don't like buying clothes and stuff on line. Only shoes are on my safe list
The clock looks vintage because vintage clocks were “in” and a popular style. Just looking at the clock, it’s like time stood still at 1:04 AM or PM-and that’s what you see here. Malls like these are greenhouses, since there’s no insulation or air circulation. That’s exactly why you see growth all around (except for where it’s supposed to be, of course). It was mold that was on that leg you saw outside of the Kids Foot Locker, not poo. When was this filmed, with all the cicadas buzzing?
I am so glad this video was made. I've been trying to get in for years but it was always locked! I used to be a 5 year old kid in the back of zales watching tv while my mom worked. They had a dollar store in there that every one loved. I truly miss this mall and watching this video brought me back to my childhood.
Hey North Alabama liver here, just went to this mall and the food court restaurant have caved in, the clock shows the same time, the mello yellow can is still there, tapes inside the security room is jn tact
Great job, guys. I love urban exploration like this, especially places that haven't been completely wrecked with graffiti. Done a little harmless trespassing myself back in my day. This reminds me of the 1959 movie Journey to the Center of the Earth, where they find the ruins of Atlantis. Urban ruins fascinate me.
My cousin's that are from Montgomery took me there in the early 70's. They lived walking distance from the zoo. They live in Millbrook now! Their neighborhood went down hill bad! But yes I've spent some time in your neck of the woods when I was little. My family there are the Glasscocks and the Noe's!
That first restaurant was the Copper Kettle!! In all malls in the same spot! D Image was a one hour photo processing place. I used to work at one in Bham. The stink was probably the chemical used to process negatives! Very toxic! Oh and it was a studio also
It's a Centennial clock. You will find them that look similar sometimes on a main street or park in towns or near a police station or courthouse...where people used to gather. It could mark something from the past....they always have atleast 2 faces. That's a really expensive intricate one. They used to exist for people to set watches to and to remember time marches onward....that one probably marked their hope the mall would be there a hundred years and it was something expensive to show off.
@RangerRickTV I am old school and don't have a presence on the Facebook deadmalls community. I run a nearly 14 year old blog. Here is my link if you would like to check it out. southernretail.blogspot.com
My dad was stationed at Maxwell Air Force Base from 90-92. You have no idea the memories that I have from Montgomery Mall. I bought new school clothes for my 8th grade year at George Washington Carver middle school from the American Eagle. I remember the Gap faced the food court. I remember buying cassette singles from Musicland. The last time I was at Montgomery Mall was April 1992. It is a shame it went downhill so quickly. It was a beautiful mall the last time I set foot there.
Right around the nine minute mark, when you’re looking down the corridor, there’s an old Disney Store on left (film strip by the window and the yellow and orange circles above the entrance). If you have any more footage of it, please post.
Malls are still alive and well here in Europe, don't know if i will eat my words in ten years but i don't expect a large mall decline in the near or even far future over here. Downtown is dead tough currently for some odd reason...
The mall may have been built in the 70s, but it's pretty obvious that it was updated in the 80s or 90s. Nothing about it looks 70s. That said, I'm amazed at how well it's been "preserved" especially considering that Montgomery is not a nice area.
Looks like a photographic shop at about the 14min mark. I recognise the automatic machines for developing films and printing to papers from the negatives and in the back the room where some manual processing was done. The stink is probably the gone off developer and fixer (I saw some bottles of these you missed to the right at 14:10) they are going to be pretty vile by now - I remember if you mixed fix and developer it produced ammonia and you could have stank out the whole mall. Imagine putting some new batteries in that megaphone and screaming into it and the cops turning up due to the noise and the silent alarm. What would you get done for, I am thinking trespass but would you get arrested and handed a big fine?
I don't think the Dallas Galleria Mall or Dallas Northpark malls are going away anytime soon. Old people walk in them. Tourists fill them. We have only those 2 malls left. The others have been dead and demolished years ago. I still have 2 of my childhood malls left. I still go to them.
We still have a mall in Tupelo Ms, but the sears located in it closed a fews years ago. It took up a pretty good section of it. It remains unoccupied to this day. Not sure if it ever will have another tenant, as it continues to deterioratet.
This is heartbreaking. Malls today aren't what they used to be in the 1980s and 1990s; big box retailers like Walmart and the Internet (Amazon anyone?) have decimated the traditional shopping mall. The 2008 recession, COVID and now the upcoming recession also hurt malls. The South is also unique in that there's a lot of dead and dying malls scattered throughout the region. I know as I used to live in Rockingham County, North Carolina during the first half of the 1990s (part of the Greensboro metro area) and we had Eden Mall. It used to have a Kmart, Kaybee Toys, a video arcade and more. Nowadays, the mall is pretty much dead as almost every store has closed down.
If you’re a GenXer you grew up around the mall. Millennials never saw the malls best times, the 80s and 90s. My old mall was built in the late 60s and torn down in 2012. The place which cut my hair beginning in the 70s was the same for my sons in the late 90s and 2000s. High school days on weekends we’d go see a movie and play arcade games. I never realized how good we had it. Back in the 80s when you were a 16 yo dude you could girl watch and not be called creepy misogynist. We definitely lived in better times.
I was sort struck between generations I felt like personal I remember mall hey days in 90s when I was a kid ever maybe teenager but down hill for them after that
Yes those were great times pumping a gallon on gas in a car for less then a dollar a gallon and buying an American made pair of buttonfly Levi 501s for $12 a pair And the ladies wanted the guys to look at them and giggle and blush when you gave them that attention The weirdo woman today are very strange and demented
Hope this one isn’t getting demolished anytime soon since they developed the old big stores into something new. This mall is incredible especially with all the stuff left behind
Crazy theres no vandalism even the hvac is fully intact. I would love to save some hvac units cus you cant get original parts anymore for most of those. They are mostly original too. A bunch of those larger units are 40 years old.
While in a distressed area with the building and parking lot looking distressed, there is an excellent meat and three right across the street called Simply Southern Cafe. The food was really good, and the people there were so nice to us. It’s a place we stop at to eat on the way to vacation in Pensacola.
Buying online sucks. I'd much rather physically touch and see what I'm about to buy first. Also I can easily return to the storecfor a return. Shopping online Returning things is a nightmare. I bet you're wrong about malls closing. I'll always shop physically. Rarely using online stores.
My friends and I are planning on taking a trip here this weekend. Do you believe it would be safe and even legal to do so or should we change our plans?
9:47 A clock in a mall is rare, especially one that stands out like that one. The thinking was letting people know what time it was made people less likely to keep shopping, as they might have needed to be somewhere.
è da un pò di anni che guardo questo tipo di video e mi piacciono molto anche se sono un pò tristi...solitamente li guardo in italiano perchè sono di quel paese ma noto che in tutto il mondo ci sono posti abbandonati.complimenti per il filmato
😊cool I injoy this, was at a mall in Dothan Alabama not to long ago seem weird after watching a banded ones, made me think, the food court is noore, so I sit and watch people looking up to the skyline hum, don't go to malls really was cool😊
Those things on the doors you thought were cameras I am pretty sure were part of an old people counter system that detected how many and what time people were coming and going.
I worked at Gayfers here and freidman's, Lane Bryant's, and Kid's Corner! This store was my junior high and high school hang out! I even remember getting caught up in a shootout in the food courts and the managers at a sports store pulled me in to get out of the line of fire. My mama never let me go back to the mall since then. I believe that was 1994😂😂
Make in to a wide indoors butter fly garden centre.the weather forecast matters and the times of destiny is changing cafes restaurants and shopping centre in store too .needs addressing 🤠
I bet the terrible smell in the back room of the photo place wasn’t *only* the restroom, it was probably also old spilled developing chemicals. Those things are STINKY even when they’re used in a pristine setting.
Now i dont know the legality on this, but i have found tapes inside the mall from a shooting in the food court parking lot,. domestic violence cases, and people slipping and falling inside the mall,
