A fantastic examination of what became the mall ... envision[ing] a more meaningful public afterlife for our shopping centers.” —Vulture
“Artfully elucidates the 70-year history of the mall ... Lange's elegant conclusion: The mall is dead; long live the mall.” —Wall Street Journal
“A well-researched introduction to the rise and fall and dicey future of an American institution.” —New York Times
“Fascinating cultural history.” —Christian Science Monitor, 10 Best Books of June
“Shines in its study of malls as symbols, and drivers, of American consumerism and urban sprawl …Though Ms Lange pays rapt attention to malls' shortcomings, her book is refreshingly optimistic.” —The Economist
“A smart and accessible cultural history-outlining the social, economic and architectural forces that led to the creation of U.S. malls as we know them … Lange doesn't have a false nostalgia for malls. Meet Me by the Fountain is frank about how they have usurped public space. But at a time when malls still serve the function of bringing us together, Lange's book is a thoughtful guide to helping them do what the best of them already have-but better.” —Los Angeles Times
“Reminds us that the mall has helped shape American society, and has evolved with our country since the 1950s ... [Lange] posits that there's still a place for malls in our society, as long as they adapt to better serve their communities.” —The Atlantic
“An insightful look at the design of both objects and public spaces.” —InsideHook
“One of our best design writers traces the influence of Waukegan's Genesse Street, “Dawn of the Dead” and department stores on now-struggling suburban sprawls saddled with acres of parking.” —Chicago Tribune
“Dives into the storied, almost nostalgic, past of the American mall and makes a case that, no, malls aren't dying-they're just changing with the times.” —Fast Company
“Lively, deeply researched, and ultimately optimistic.” —The Architect's Newspaper
“Reading this book is like looking in the nooks, crannies, and hidden hallways of your local shopping emporium with a critical eye. It's a hark back to your childhood in the most intriguing way.” —The Bookworm Sez
“This thorough, culturally aware history will surprise and inspire audiences who may feel they already know the story of the shopping megaplex … Despite malls' sometimes problematic past, Lange envisions an inspiring, community-oriented repurposing of these monuments to consumerism.” —Shelf Awareness Pro
“A deeply researched history … The mall is dead-but it may yet live again, as Lange's instructive book capably shows.” —Kirkus Reviews
“A thought-provoking cultural history ... Lucid and well researched, this is an insightful study of an overlooked and undervalued architectural form.” —Publishers Weekly
“In this spry architectural history, Lange tracks the American shopping mall's postwar origins, evolution during the second half of the twentieth century, and twenty-first-century collapse and future possibility ... invite[s] readers to map their own mall experiences onto the chronologically organized accounts of architects, developers, and specific sites that follow.” —Booklist
“Just as Lange reflects on the joy she found at the local North Carolina mall of her childhood, many readers will likely reminisce about the malls where they once shopped or worked or simply hung out. But Lange eschews nostalgia in favor of bold ideas that focus on community and sustainability.” —Christian Science Monitor
“It is hard to imagine a more complete social, architectural, cultural, economic or cross-national comparison of shopping malls than this book provides.” —Inside Higher Ed
“Chronicling the architecture of the mall in an entertaining and accessible account, Lange reveals how design formed this everlasting cultural symbol of the so-called American Dream.” —Metropolis Magazine
“Design is the leitmotif that knits the narrative in Meet Me by the Fountain together, but the breadth of Lange's analysis gives it deeper meaning ... Engrossing and accessible reading.” —Azure Magazine
“Easy-to-digest information about malls, their nostalgic appeal, and fabled history ... the perfect book to add to your library.” —Archinect
“[A] contradiction sits at the center of Lange's book: The mall is beautiful and soothing, but its pursuit of profit steers it away from truly serving us … What might bloom in the husks of dead or dying malls might not be squalor, Lange writes, but opportunity. Rather than tear them down, she argues, let's reimagine their use of public space.” —The Nation
“Mixing firsthand reporting and historical research, Lange traces the history of malls, from coast to coast, to show us not just how malls have changed, but how they've also changed us.” —Fast Company, Best Design Books of 2022
“An architectural page-turner. This insightful, witty, and smart book captures everything compelling and confounding about the American mall.” —Roman Mars, co-author of THE 99% INVISIBLE CITY
“A mall is not just a mall in this fascinating, far-reaching history. Alexandra Lange nimbly navigates sweeping changes in American society, explaining so much more than how and where we shop, and-much like the architectural institution at the book's center-providing plenty of fun along the way.” —Julia Cooke, author of COME FLY THE WORLD
“Alexandra Lange is the poet laureate of mall culture, and her book is as delightful as a cold Orange Julius. Deeply researched and full of fascinating insights.” —Rachel Syme, staff writer, The New Yorker
“The shopping mall is an American tragedy but also a triumph. This book shows both its sides with generosity and tenderness.” —Ian Bogost, author of PLAY ANYTHING
“Brilliantly explores how these places we thought were just churches built for worshipping at the altar of capitalism actually represent everything we are, aren't, want to be, and never knew we could have been.” —Jason Diamond, author of THE SPRAWL
04/25/2022
Design critic Lange (The Design of Childhood) delivers a thought-provoking cultural history of the shopping mall. Noting that malls emerged as the U.S. “reinvented itself” in the decades after WWII, Lange recounts how Austrian architect Victor Gruen convinced the owners of J. L. Hudson department store in Detroit to build four regional shopping centers in the city’s booming suburbs. Northland Center, which opened in 1954, had a covered passageway linking its six buildings and landscaped plazas to provide “circulation and a sense of orientation for the shopper.” Its success led to Gruen’s development of America’s first enclosed shopping mall in a Minneapolis suburb in 1956 and set the stage for later innovations, including Boston’s Faneuil Hall, which repurposed 19th-century market buildings and featured “quirky and local businesses” rather than chain stores, and the rise of supersized malls, including the Mall of America. Lange also explores how malls gave teenagers newfound independence and reinforced racial inequities by catering to predominately white suburbanites. Contending that malls answer “the basic human need” of bringing people together, Lange advocates for retrofitting abandoned shopping centers into college campuses, senior housing, and “ethnocentric marketplaces” catering to immigrant communities. Lucid and well researched, this is an insightful study of an overlooked and undervalued architectural form. Agent: Joe Veltre, Gersh Agency. (June)
2022-03-11
A deeply researched history of the American shopping mall.
“The American dream—bootstraps, frontier, white picket fence—did not originally include malls,” writes architectural and design critic Lange, author of The Design of Childhood and other books. While the enclosed mall had forerunners in the shopping centers of an earlier era, the modern mall was a postwar innovation brought to the U.S. courtesy of an Austrian refugee who had models in the arcades of Renaissance Italy. Of course, the American dream embodied by the mall was not available to everyone. It was a thing of the suburbs and, as such, was racially divided, “born from speculation that a whites-only version of the city…would prove to be a better return on investment.” Later mall developers built in downtown urban areas, with race slowly giving way, at least in some places, to a distaste for the teenagers who flocked there simply to have someplace to go. As Lange writes, one solution was to build game arcades in distant corners away from the anchor department stores to which grown-ups were drawn. The author covers a great deal of ground, and while her narrative sometimes threatens to become a data dump, there are numerous fruitful avenues to explore—e.g., the role of Muzak in mall culture and beyond, the metamorphosis of the mall in different regions, the origins of “mall walking,” and the slow, tortured decline of the mall as numerous factors—not least of them the advent of online shopping—came into play. Lange concludes by examining the possibility that the mall might be reborn as something more than simply a shopping space by incorporating offices, hotels, and even educational centers. And yes, plenty of shops: “Shopping isn’t going anywhere, and it’s so much nicer to do it together.”
The mall is dead—but it may yet live again, as Lange’s instructive book capably shows.
