This book was truly a flash to the past. It details the history of the American shopping mall and the cultural icon they once were. It carries through to the modern day with a look at abandoned malls with acres of paved parking, once thriving and now found in decay throughout America. I'd recommend this for anyone interested in a fun, memory-filled read about days gone by.

This would be a good text to have for a non-fiction library collection, where people could browse through and pick the chapters they want to read--or read the whole book. The beginning was very interesting which was how shopping malls began and then the book progressed to how many malls were built, different kinds of malls, and then sadly the end of malls. But wait--the text continued with how malls have had to change with the times and the different ways that they have been reborn. It was not exactly what I thought the book was going to be and by the end of the book, I could have cared less about malls, especially the chapter on malls outside of the US, but I think by picking and choosing parts of the book, most everyone could find something of interest.

This book was far different than expected. It covered a great deal of architecture history related to malls but not very much of the cultural history, which is what I was looking for. If you're into architecture, this one will work.

I can't tell you the last time I've been to a proper mall. Reading this book took me right back to when it was an integral part of my childhood. When I was younger, we would take family excursions to a mall an hour away from home because it was better than our normal everyday mall down the street. Lange traces the history of how malls became social centers and what caused their decline. A great read for anyone who has fond memories of these bastions of consumerism.

I really enjoyed this deep delve into the history of malls, especially now that their existence seems to be threatened by modern internet shopping. I enjoyed walking around the mall as a kid browsing various clothing items and knick-knacks all while snacking on an Auntie Anne's pretzel. Where else could you drop your kids off for the day unsupervised and not worry about sending food with them. It was a great place for teenagers to exercise some independence and start to spread their wings to adulthood. And also it was just fun! The author goes into the design of malls and how they could possible remake themselves to appeal to modern shoppers. I hope to see this change happen. Especially so there's not another huge concrete building left to fall apart.

I received this ebook for free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I really enjoyed reading Meet me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall by Alexandre Lange. I wasn't quite sure what to expect when I chose it, but as someone who spent a lot of their tween/teen years at the mall, I was interested to learn more about its history and place in society. I particularly enjoyed reading about how malls (in the way we now know them) came together and what technological advancements enabled, as well as how they were marketing to the masses in the early years. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the cultural history of malls.

When I was 12, I went to the mall after school to look at a dress in the window at Laura Ashley. I pined after that dress. And Laura Ashley, unlike the fast-fashion outlets of today, kept the same dress in the window for weeks, its floral print illuminated by fluorescent lights.

Making people want things has always been part of mall design. In their ideal form, malls offer a smorgasbord of shopping options in a safe, climate-controlled environment. Around the next corner is another store, with another window, offering something new. Meantime, one finds places to eat, places to sit, and piped-in music to maintain the mood. What you want is not simply the object you shop for but to be at the mall. The “Gruen Transfer,” named for mall designer Victor Gruen, is defined as the point in time that mall-going ceases to be about running an errand and becomes about enjoying the visit itself.

As architecture critic Alexandra Lange notes in Meet Me By The Fountain, “People love to be in public with other people.” For the suburbs, malls offered this experience in the way that parks and town squares had in the past. Like railway stations and hotels before them, malls created a zone of public-private space: private property, yet open to the public to use within certain bounds. They are enjoyed by groups as diverse as white-haired walking groups, teenage truants, and representatives of fringe religions scouting for recruits.

Malls in their prime form emerged after World War II. By the 1970s, they had become a ubiquitous element in suburban life and in popular culture. They often featured as the setting of 1980s-era urban legends about child abductions, featuring kidnappers who were supposedly adept enough to cut and dye a child’s hair in a public restroom before making their escape.

Lange delves into the design and planning of particular malls, explaining how they thrived (or didn’t). She discusses mall engineering and business structures and how localities responded to them. For years, mall construction figured prominently in American public architecture; Lange details precisely how the form evolved, and what each generation learned from its predecessors about consumer behavior.

For a time, middle-class suburban women provided malls with their customer base—and their employees. Malls’ retail shops offered part-time work to mothers located close to their homes and in the same place where, for example, she might drop her kids off for ballet practice.

Dead and dying malls now dot many suburbs, however, and are mocked on South Park as abandoned hellscapes. What killed them wasn’t just online shopping or big box stores, but a broader cultural shift. Malls succeeded by catering to different groups, from housewives to retirees to teens, the latter often attracted to cinema multiplexes and arcades, until Netflix and Nintendo undercut both options.

Even today, though, the retail mall remains overwhelmingly an American form. According to Lange approximately 24 square feet of retail space exists for every American, compared with 16.8 for Canada, 4.6 for the United Kingdom, and 2.8 for China. The relative lack of malls in the United Kingdom may explain why department stores there made the shift to online shopping sooner than U.S. stores. (The U.K. still leads the U.S. by some margin in the percentage of retail sales that take place online.)

U.K. developers did make several attempts to imitate American-style malls. Meet Me by the Fountain describes postwar New Town models and, starting in the 1960s, the chain of Arndale Centres. But malls remained uncommon, due in part to higher land costs and associated challenges. With greater open spaces and car-dependent suburbs, Australia and Canada were more mall-friendly. (Indeed, Westfield Corporation, which now dominates the global mall landscape, is an Australian firm.)

Many critics see malls as anti-urban, emblematic of the abandonment of downtown shopping as middle classes fled the city for dormitory suburbs, but Lange casts her net wider, discussing the mall’s urban iterations. Downtown-regeneration malls, like the “festival marketplaces” that started popping up after the 1970s, typically featured pedestrianized streets and reused industrial buildings rather than being more narrowly purpose-built. But as with the convention center and stadium—the other classic urban-renewal white elephants—these malls were not always what consumers wanted or needed. “From 1959 through the early 1980s,” Lange writes, “more than two hundred American cities closed blocks of their downtowns to car traffic. By 2000, fewer than twenty-four of those original malls remained.”

The urban mall has taken on newer forms. The more recent downtown mall developments I’ve seen have been glossy and high-end, all glass walls and Gucci—a far cry from Spencer’s Gifts and Auntie Anne’s. Aspirational malls also tend to feature a “concierge desk,” a faux-genteel version of the information booth. These venues want to attract shoppers, of course, but they don’t exactly encourage people to hang around all day (seating options are limited). They assume their customers are in transit, on the way to the office, the train, or the gym. It’s a different mindset from that of the mall-as-destination.

It’s been years since I have gone to a mall to window-shop or to relax. I no longer pine for dresses in a store window; those are now to be found in one of the open tabs in my browser. For me, malls are now sites of occasional desperation, as when I find myself in a strange town and need to get something quickly. I’ll wander into a Macy’s or a Nordstrom Rack, where the lingerie department looks like the aftermath of a police raid. Finding anything that fits is like picking a winning lottery ticket. Meantime, my meeting is in two hours, and I’m trying to remember where I parked the rental car (Blue 12? Green 9?). No Gruen transfer here.

As a historian, I’m also fond of noticing how much things cycle back to the past. The contemporary big-box store, for instance—containing a cafe, drugstore, and other elements—is just the down-market version of the grand, turn-of-the-century department store in the model of Wanamaker’s or Selfridges. These stores contained everything under one roof, offering the lady shopper a place to browse, eat lunch, and get her hair done. The midcentury mall itself was in a way the “centrifuging” out of those various departments into individual retailers located across a wider space. And now we see them spooling back in, like a yo-yo, in a different form.

Lange is optimistic that malls can be reinvented. She offers examples of malls that have become hubs for immigrant communities, particularly for the selling of food. But in another sense, we are at the mall all the time—in virtual space.

I was not sure how much I would enjoy a book on the history of shopping malls. However, I found this book exceptionally information and thoroughly enjoyable. I learned so much and it brought back many memories of my youth. I cannot recommend this highly enough--especially to readers who experienced the era(s) of the shopping mall.

Great history of malls and there place in society.

Interesting to see how they were so popular and now are facing serious issues, yet its not the malls that have changed, but rather the times and the people.

Extremely well researched and fun to read. Lots of tidbits that made me sit up and take notice.

As if I didn’t miss malls in their heyday enough already.

This is a terrifically fun and informative piece of niche historical nonfiction that is sure to please anyone who is nostalgic for mall culture or who has an interest in functional architecture in general.

Alexandra Lange does an exceptional job of tracing the history of the shopping mall through its practical purposes, it’s sociocontextural role in its community, and its sad demise in the face of lifestyle changes amongst shoppers and damaging business practices by both mall owners and their competitors.

The book is worth a read purely for the nostalgia trip (Hot Topic! Auntie Anne’s Pretzel smell! Arcades!), but is also an excellent study in both culture and commercial architecture. I love the way Lange weaves the real history of the mall in with the way it’s reflected in fictional contexts, beginning with Zola’s The Ladies Paradise and the roots of the department store and moving forward in time to mall scenes in teen movies like Clueless and Mean Girls, used here to demonstrate the importance of malls to teenage social life.

Along with the big stuff, there’s some fun little oddball facts in here as well. Ever heard of MallWave? I hadn’t until I read this book, and now I stare mesmerized at it while trying to fall asleep at night.

I will say that it helps if you’ve been to at least some of the malls Lange uses as case studies in the book (I had at some point in time been to pretty much all of the malls mentioned in the eastern part of the country), because it helps you visualize the ideas (particularly those relating to design layout) being discussed. That said, though I wish there had been more photos and possibly blueprint drawings, Lange does a lovely job of bringing each mall she discusses to life with her words.

I thought this was fantastic and have zero complaints except that I wish it had been longer!

This is very well-written and thoroughly researched. I learned a lot about how the concept of malls came to be, how they developed, and evolved, and how they both reflected and shaped societal issues and fault lines. I had never really considered how the advent of retail shopping supported first and second wave feminism. I hadn't thought about how retail was one of the first adopters of a lot of engineering developments like air conditioning, elevators, and even electricity itself. I had no idea of the staggering retail square footage/citizen that exists in America and how bloated it is compared to the rest of the world!

This was interesting reading and I'm glad to have learned these things, but I really wanted a nostalgia-trip coffee table book. I was hoping for lots of pictures and a fun revisit to my youth of hanging around the local mall for hours on end with only a few dollars (what on earth did we actually DO???). This touches on that, of course, but it's really not the main focus. That doesn't diminish what it is, of course, but readers should go in knowing what to expect.

Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review!

Meet me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall by Alexandre Lange offers the reader the full history of development of the shopping mall in postwar North America, with many a surprising tangent such as the music genre Mallwave, while also considering where malls currently fit into American culture.

Across 7 chapters (and a coda) we hop across the United States visiting various cities seeing the various architectural, economic, and aesthetic developments of malls. Lange begins by centering her own experience growing up socializing in malls well also establishing the focus of the book to explore the inherent conflict of the mall, social space versus economic space.

It is at times fascinating, but, the first half of the book is very detail dense. The book is populated with a large number of businesses, developers, architects and spokespeople often espousing the same ideas and phrases. The city hopping taxes with the repetition of picking a location, designing, developing, usage and lifespan of each of the featured malls.

Where the book truly comes alive is when Lange turns the focus from the creation of the malls to who and how they are used. Chapter 5, in particular, explores with nuance looking both generationally (teens and elderly mall walkers) and culturally (ethno-burbs and pop culture examples). The changing questions of what is a mall is reevaluated across the eras with the switch in ways we consume, more momentously for the shift to online shopping that was only exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The coda also points to a potentially better way to frame the work by looking at the mall in global settings and how different locations and cultures have adapted to the shopping mall. They point the way forward for the American Mall as we have become more conscious of the environmental harm of fast fashion and car culture.

Meet Me By The Fountain is a joyful ride through nostalgia as we learn about the rise of the "mall" in suburbia and urban settings and the positive and negative impact on communities due to "urban renewal" programs. . Lange is a design critic so we get exquisite detail on the architecture and design of many malls such as North Park, Northland, Mall of America and halls such as Quincy Market/Faneuil Market or Hudson Yards. I was fascinated by all the thought that went into the design of the shape of the mall with anchor stores, the community gathering spaces (hence the title) and the art and "muzak." But the nostalgia part also shines through in this book, as I read it brought me back to my days at the mall as "someplace to go" when I wasn't sure what I wanted to do -- I could go alone or with my friends -- there are always places to eat, to browse, to see a movie. As a teenager, I worked during the week and then took my savings to the mall every weekend to shop for the latest fashions I saw in Seventeen Magazine. Lange also does a great job putting malls in a cultural context -- from zombie movies and books to movies from the 1980's/1990's such as Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Clueless and Valley Girl. Malls have changed over the years and many have either been torn down or have replaced anchor stores with gyms, warehouses, etc. The rise of online shopping has cut into profits of brick and mortar stores over time, but at the same time, there is nothing like wandering a mall to people watch and browse merchandise. My mother who is in her mid 80's told me the other day that "Well I think I will go over to the mall to look around." Malls can still play a meaningful role for all generations particularly now that we don't have many "town squares" left. I recommend this book because it is chock full of interesting facts and details.

"Every day will be a perfect shopping day."
- Ad for the world's first indoor shopping mall.

I'm old enough to remember the wonders of shopping downtown: enticing store window displays, the sporting goods store turning its backroom into a magical Santa Land every November, the fun and occasional agony of buying my back-to-school wardrobe, and horrifying stretchy gym-suit from the local merchants. One of the highlights of the year was Sidewalk Sales Days every July. Streets were closed off to make wandering back and forth between the stores that much easier.

On Friday nights, my parents and I would dine out at a downtown restaurant, but then we'd head to the strip center outside of town. There wasn't much to it: a Town & Country department store, a Joe, the Motorists' Friend, but it had a great independently owned bookstore where each of us would easily find something we wanted to read. Then, in the early seventies, the Plaza got some competition - a new mall opened up on the other side of town. The strip center morphed into an enclosed mall in order to stay alive. The downtown merchants either headed to the malls or closed their doors.

Since my teenage years, malls have been an unforgettable part of my life. The mall was not only where I shopped and hung with friends, it was actually where I went to see my grandparents. That dynamic duo loved to be on the go, but every Saturday night, they'd be dining at Woolworth's in one of the booths by the window that overlooked the mall. I smiled and waved as I strolled past. My aunt Barb got her dream job there at the mall, demonstrating the pianos and organs for sale at the music store. I myself spent more than a few years toiling for pennies at various mall stores, from Pearle Vision Center, to Sear's, to JOANN Fabrics. My friends were other employees I'd met at the mall.

Malls have obviously meant a lot to Alexandra Lange, as well, so much so that she spent many hours researching and writing a book about them. Her detailed account is exhaustive, and, at times, exhausting to read. There was honestly more history here than I wanted, from the origins of these climate controlled dreamscapes for consumers, to the stories behind specific malls.

Chapter 5 was more my style, when the author delved more into the cultural, social, and community aspects of the shopping mall. It was fascinating to read about everything from muzak, to food courts, and all the work that goes into creating an atmosphere that encourages lingering. She also touches on how malls have become a pervasive part of our popular culture.

I'm happy to report that in the town where I live now, there has been a resurgence and a rebirth of the downtown area. Since the pandemic, eight new stores have opened, almost all of them owned by people in their twenties. Will the downtown area become the new "mall"? An interesting idea, and something to keep an eye on.

I actually need to mention one other way that malls have impacted my life: thirty-three years ago, I met my husband at a mall when we were both working at B. Dalton Bookseller.

Perhaps we should have gotten married by the fountain . . .

A Big Topic Surrounded by Big Ideas


This book is not a nostalgic photo journey. It's not a personal coming of age tale. It's not a rigorous architectural evaluation. It's not a dry history of what was built where and when. It's not about the past or future of dead malls. There's some of that here of course, but it's all embedded in a much larger context. The Mall is treated as an emblem and avatar of everything culturally important that happened between the 1950's and now. In calm, cool, and deeply informed prose our author traces multiple threads that cover race, class, demographics, public spaces, design, soft pretzels, baby booms, first jobs, consumerism, entrepreneurial inspiration, developer economics, ruin porn, and all of the different ways that Malls have helped define the American Dream, and have reflected, decade by decade, where we came from as a society and where we're headed.


To be fair, there is some repetition and a few dry stretches, but by and large the narrative moves along at a good pace.


The tone is mellow-professional and assured. You will recall your own Mall moments and experiences, and perhaps be surprised to remember how much time you spent in Malls and how much of a role Malls played in your social life, your economic life, and your cultural life. So, come on in and try not to get lost.


(Please note that I received a free advance will-self-destruct-in-x-days Adobe Digital copy of this book without a review requirement, or any influence regarding review content should I choose to post a review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)

I was a teenager who sometimes hung out at the many malls in my city. And indeed I would meet people at the fountain, so the title immediately grabbed me. The book has nostalgic value for readers such as myself who took malls for granted and never really thought about the how and whys of them. For the reader who wants to dig deep on malls, this is the perfect book. For others, it may lag a bit, but if you pick and choose from the content, you'll find it very satisfying.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of Meet Me By the Fountain by Alexandra Lange. All thoughts and opinions are my own. Thanks to NetGalley and Bloomsbury Publishing for this ARC

In her book Meet Me by the Fountain, Alexandra Lange gives us a detailed history of the mall in America. This book takes a deep look into the classic idea of a "town square," which shifted into what we know as the modern mall. From the baby boomers to the mall rats of the eighties, the mall held space in our collective consciousness. That is, until online shopping and the Pandemic destroyed many US malls.

This book was absolutely fascinating, and if you are interested in researching architecture and the use of physical locations in society throughout history then this is the book for you. While there were a few spots that felt there was a bit too much info, for the most part, this book was easily digested and really put into perspective what we lose by getting rid of malls. I rate this book 4/5 stars.

A comprehensive microhistory of the mall in America. Well researched, this book digs into the details the details of malls from their first conception to more modern iterations by looking at the mall through different lenses.

If you are looking to learn absolutely everything about malls, this is the book for you. I found this book to drag, focusing at length on minutia that I didn't find compelling. There was a large focus on the mall's architecture and physical place instead of the sociological narrative focusing on it's impact on people and culture that I was looking for.

I would give this book 3.5 stars. It’s an interesting topic and the writing style is easy to read, but some parts of the book felt a bit dragged out.

I found this book fascinating and interesting on the overall impact of the Mall.

My entire life I had been exposed to the mall and I still go to this day even if the mall in my hometown is becoming a “Zombie Mall.”

I love the mix of genres from the architecture parts to the business and history angles that Lange inserts to help understand just how important malls were and in some cases still are.