Mid-America Mall, as it was originally envisioned. With all the trees, it's hard to capture this scene today. And that's a good thing, actually.
I happen to think that Main Street Mall is quite lovely. Morning, afternoon, and evening, it's filled with people, who jostle each other, dodge the scooters and trolleys, and visit the shops, cafes, restaurants, and work places. Murals and artwork brighten the whole area, Court Square is an oasis in the heart of the city, and the trees up and down the mall provide shade from the heat of the summertime.
Years ago, planners obviously had a different vision for our city's former Main Street, as you can clearly see in this early rendering, found at a local garage sale. It shows the proposed "Mid-America Mall," as it would be called, as viewed looking north from Madison. You can see the old Kress Building barely visible on the left, next to a Baker's shoe store.
After closing the street to all vehicles, the planners — and I won't go into all the names and agencies involved at the time — first decided that all the vintage signs (included some of the best neon you'd ever find in Memphis) had to go. So workers used cutting torches to hack the signs off the buildings, often leaving ragged stumps of their support structures behind. The main thing was a clean look; get rid of all that "clutter."
Of course, after closing off the street, most of the few remaining businesses closed as well, so the signs were pointless.
Next, they pulled up the original street and sidewalks and laid down mud-brown brick pavers. Not really visible here, but a distinctive part of the new design, were stacks of bricks, arranged into blocks and squares and rectangles. The idea, I suppose, was that these would be inviting places to sit and relax and enjoy the new mall. But they weren't.
Nice touches, or so it seemed at the time, were the many shallow pools and fountains that punctuated the new mall. But these too didn't work as well as intended, since they tended to fill up with debris, and I believe more than one person tumbled into them by accident. Can you imagine how dangerous these would be today, with all those scooters and bicycles whizzing along?
The mall actually looked like this for several years, until it got a complete makeover (and a new name: Main Street Mall), with its vintage trolleys, now fully grown trees, and other enticements. I like it quite a bit now. Back then, not so much.
