Urban Decay

One thing I've always kind of had a fascination with is seeing decaying buildings and wondering what that area was like in its prime.

I used to work for a cable company in the early 90's for a couple of years. I used to travel a lot and one place I used to go to quite a bit was Shamrock Texas. Our corporate office was there. The old Route 66 goes through there. I drove down it a few times just to see what was there.

There are a lot of dilapidated gas stations, lots of motels with odd themes, lots of broken neon tubes. Lots of broken dreams. In its heyday I'm sure it was quite a site.

I found this site last night. I've been to four of the malls on this site! North Town in Springfield Missouri, Hutchinson Mall in Kansas, and Shepard and Crossroads in Oklahoma City. I happen to live in a town where a mall is dying and might make for an interesting submission.

Love the pictures on this site! I saw North Town in its prime very shortly after it was built! Went there a few times but I was pretty young! Saw Popeye there in fact in 1980 so I was ten. I also went to the Battlefield mall in Springfield a lot. It is a huge mall! When I see Dawn of the Dead it reminds me of Battlefield in fact!

All of those 1970's stores that existed back then and are gone now, it reminds me of Route 66 and a lot of the broken down buildings. I saw North Town in its prime and now it is gone I believe, if not it should be.

One of the most interesting malls on this site is Dixie Square Mall in Harvey Illinois. Here is a great site for that one individual mall too!

The Blues Brothers mall scene was shot here and it was abandoned then! It apparently is still standing.


And this one


What a great commentary on these hulking buildings of yesteryear. How things change and evolve. Places that seem like they were so busy they could never fail eventually fall into disrepair and decay. Our own mall was very busy for a few years. Eventually stores close or move. Right now even though it has three anchor stores the food court is almost vacant. A lot of the medium stores are gone or closing. It is probably 40% full. It will decay more from here even though it opened up in the early 80's. I recall that one of the first movies shown there was Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter and that was 1984.

So it is roughly twenty five years old.