Enfield, Connecticut started cycling through malls in the late 1960s when I was 10 or 12. I don't know if there's anything left there (it's a little out of my orbit today). Everything has gone back to standalone stores -- and MALL*WART.

Oh yeah! I've actually heard of Enfield Square Mall. Its become an infamous dead mall among people who make videos of that sort of thing.

Enfield looks pretty interesting from street view actually. Has a type of company houses I've never seen before. Look like they could either be rowhouses or apartments. Big 3 story wooden buildings with multiple doorways

I'll have to spend some time there. I live in Southeastern Connecticut and Enfield is North Central -- a bit of a haul. Company houses are a fascination of mine, though, especially if they're brick.

Same tbh, except I like the wooden ones. Idk why I have that preference.

There were more wooden ones! One of my earliest memories, I'm thinking very early 1960s, is accompanying my Dad to drop off a pay envelope and a Christmas basket to a sick employee of his. It was a three-story mill house built a century earlier for the Willimantic Thread Company. It was the only one still standing and I clearly recall the bright yellow and black checkerboard floor in the downstairs hall. Long gone now; replaced with a theater that was flattened years ago.

we had a similar thing happen in the area I grew up in, the Camp Hill mall used to be the smaller of the two malls in the area, but unlike it's competitor it featured an arcade and a comic shop. I had fond memories of playing skee-ball there in the 90s, buying Sonic comics and later, manga.

Same fate: they gutted it and turned it into a shopping plaza in the 2000s. Though for some reason it maintained a very small segment of mall-hall, connecting two of it's stores to this day.

Yeah our local mall(the big new one that replaced this one) had a really cool arcade by the food court with neon and shiny stainless steel panels. Was always really busy. Also had a pet store.

In my younger days there was the Eastland Shopping Center that actually started out as an outdoor shopping center with two rows of shops with a park like pedestrian walking space between the two rows. The big "Anchor Stores" were at each end of the center with a Clifton's cafeteria in the middle. In the 1970s, the center was converted into a shopping mall by the addition of a roof over the open areas, and additional "Satellite" stores spang up in the surrounding parking areas. That mall struggled on for several decades until it faced it's recent remodel that included the addition of a Walmart, Target, a Disney day camp and several other locations. The Walmart was closed recently, and the Eastland staggers on.

The opening of the even larger, two-level West Covina Mall just a couple miles to the East Knocked Eastland down a couple notches, but that mall too has had its share of troubles. Anyway, this is my round-about way of saying that I have also noted the "Life Cycle" of shopping malls as well.

Interesting, our only other surviving mall was built in 1965 and I believe was also originally an outdoor mall.

At least it got repurposed into something new!

Over here we are actually seeing malls still surging, though there are a couple of caveats to this:

1. On one hand we have malls that are within cities and are thus guaranteed customers since it's not unusual to have said mall be next to a dense (5 story apt blocks) residential area. These also have areas to hang about and things like cinema and general stores/supermarkets.

2. Malls further out that usually deal in specialty wares (construction, house appliances, woodwork) that do fine since they don't need constant high-volume traffic.

On the other hand - a typical American-style mall named West Gate did fail after a few years since people from the capital and the countryside farther out had fa better or closer options.

Yeah, there are several thriving farmers markets here, which are just indoor malls with food stalls and small businesses. if anything it seems like those have only gone up in demand.

Funny, seems to be the opposite with urban malls in the US. Most of those I knew about have closed or are struggling. I'm not sure if its a crime thing or due to American cities having been pretty hollowed out in the 1960s. I suspect a combination of both.

I don't think we have anything like the specialty malls you described. Hardware is mainly limited to box stores

Good example of the second is Bauhaus:

https://mtsi.si/wp-content/uploads/.....5/bauhaus2.jpg

All the tools and handystuff you'll ever need ^^