Malled

I won’t pretend to be a stranger to the mall, much less to the Providence Place Mall. I have been to the mall every year of college, multiple times a year in fact. I have gone with friends and I have gone alone. I have walked down the hill and up the hill, I have driven, and I have crawled. I have searched for last minute formal dresses, I have hunted for jean shorts, and I have lost my shit at the Spirit Halloween. All of these trips have been remarkably unpleasant, but I didn’t embark upon such journeys for fun. The Providence Place Mall is not an ideal destination, but an unfortunate reality of modern consumer battles: When you’ve exhausted all other options, the mall is a final place to turn. 

But on this particular Saturday, my roommate Emily happens to have an appointment at the Apple Store. So, an hour before she’s set to appear before the Genius Bar on the first floor of the Providence Place Mall, we hop into Hank her Honda Pilot and make the drive down College Hill. My other roommate Sarah joins us, sticking a bag of craisins in her tote bag before heading out the door. “Just in case,” she tells me. Provisions for the journey ahead.  

In the sense that the Providence Place Mall is almost exactly like every other mall I’ve ever been to, it too is both entirely unremarkable and the weirdest place on earth. After parking Hank in the garage (P2 Row 40), we head inside and begin our long ascent up the escalators. During our ride to the upper level we pass over an Ardene, its storefront gliding below us before receding out of view. EVERYTHING MUST GO, a sign in the window reads. MAJOR BLOWOUT. The mall, it seems, has seen better days. But this isn’t a complete surprise. 

The American mall has been dying a slow, much covered death for decades: Sonnets about the mall and odes to the mall eulogize this once shining emblem of American consumer culture—a haunting, vestigial relic of a once thriving middle class. And they’ve done so, over and over again: Why Did the Enclosed Mall Die? Why the Death of Malls Is About More Than Shopping. Malls Are Dying, but Here’s a Three Step Plan That Can Save Them. What Should Be Done with America’s Abandoned Malls?, headlines loudly cry. While there were about 2,500 American malls in 1980, today, just around 700 remain. Still, while we may preemptively mourn the mall, anticipating its seemingly inevitable demise, the damn thing just keeps on kicking. Because while the mall is certainly dying, at this rate, the mall may never die. 

When we arrive on the main floor, Sarah, Emily, and I unspeakingly agree to divide and conquer, each veering off in our own separate direction. We have learned this lesson the hard way, as Sarah and Emily will frequently crouch down on the floor in public when they get tired, which will make me cry which will make them cry. But today I am on a mission, so I must leave such weakness behind. I beeline to Abercrombie, resolved to embark upon my journey alone. 

I am no stranger to the mall: I haul from mall country, which in part explains my stamina. The biggest mall in America, not to be confused with THE Mall of America, but simply, America’s biggest mall resides just a few towns over from the town where I was raised. 

Actually, that’s not entirely true—or so I’ve recently learned.  

According to Wikipedia, the King of Prussia Mall in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania is the nation’s 5th biggest indoor mall. But growing up I was always told that KOP was the nation’s biggest mall, so apocryphal or not, this is what I choose to believe. Because unlike some landmark malls like the Mall of America or New Jersey’s American Dream, KOP is one solid block of pure, undiluted mall. No amusement parks, no wedding alters, no frills. It’s simply all stores, some chains occupying more than one location—because why schlep to the Sunglass Hut in the Plaza when there’s a closer, perfectly good Sunglass Hut in the Court?

While the Providence Place Mall is no KOP, I will admit that it certainly has its charms. According to a 2022 Buzzfeed.com article, Providence Place is the second largest indoor carpeted mall on the face of the entire planet—although, it bears mentioning that the Providence Journal has not been able to independently verify this claim, nor has Providence Place Mall leadership.

Regardless of the technical accuracy of this ranking, however, there’s still no denying that the Providence Place Mall is almost completely covered with wall to wall gray carpeting. So while I may not love the mall, I can at least appreciate that they’ve literally rolled out the carpet, anticipating my arrival.

‍

As I wander into Abercrombie, I get through the doorframe and immediately lose focus. Jeans… do I need jeans? Yes, probably. Yes, I forgot! I do, I MUST! Better try some on. I grab a pair of Curve Love High Rise 90s Relaxed Jeans in like four different sizes and ask the cashier for a fitting room, all of which appear to be located in the center of the store inside a questionable arrangement of flex walls. 

Dressing room lighting is one of the cruelest conspiracies on earth. I didn’t think I had eczema, but after staring at myself in the harsh yellow lighting, now I’m not so sure. Patchy, pore-ridden, jaundiced. And then, looking myself dead in the eye through the mirror, I tell myself the following lie: I don’t need to take off my shoes to try these on. This is immediately followed by four minutes of hubristic kicking, stomping, and shaking.

Now slightly dustier and sweatier, I emerge from Abercrombie empty handed (I decide to just order jeans online next time there’s a sale) and stumble my way over to Zara. I’m but a few feet into the store when I bump into Sarah, clutching onto an armful of hangers. “I’m looking for some elevated basics,” she tells me. I nod in understanding. 

The inside of Zara is surgically, almost blindingly bright; an anemic white guise seems to exude from every orifice, bouncing off from one shiny, colorless surface and onto the next. Noticing a distinct lack of Going Out Tops, I turn around to leave. Even halfway down the hallway, however, I can still see the store’s spaceship-like interior gleaming faintly in the distance. While somewhat retrograde today, there was seemingly a time when such fluorescent lighting was the future. In fact, it was presumably during this time that Victor Gruen, the father of the American mall, became utterly obsessed, infatuated, enamored with its glow. 

A graduate of the Austrian Academy of Fine Arts, the young Jewish architect was already making a name for himself in Europe when his home city of Vienna was annexed by Nazi Germany in 1938. Forced to flee Austria, the then 35 year-old Gruen ultimately resettled in New York City where he would go on to revolutionize the modern storefront, transforming 5th Avenue from a simple block of stores into an internationally renowned center of luxury urban shopping. Before that, however, Gruen was first hired to design an exhibition for the 1939 World’s Fair: It was there—where the now ubiquitous lighting fixture was first widely displayed—that Gruen discovered fluorescence. 

Gruen saw the storefront as a stage. And like any practiced master of ceremonies, he knew that the key to hooking an audience was emotional, psychological. On 5th Avenue, Gruen and his collaborators worked to design elaborate arcade entrances, attempting to draw the customer inwards with opulently decorated window displays and strategically highlighted merchandise. Fluorescent lighting, and Gruen’s other favorite medium, glass, were staples in his architectural toolkit. Designed to mimic midday sunlight yet uniquely long-lasting, the fluorescent light bulb offered an irresistible synergy between synthetic and natural lighting. Soon, fluorescent overheads became the default, ensuring that the sun would never set again inside the modern retail outlet. For the American consumer, shopping could (and would) go on forever. 

This style of entrapping aesthetic manipulation has since been deemed the “Gruen effect,” named for the de facto originator of the practice. An instrument of mild psychological warfare, it’s a tactic that’s since been widely applied in most malls, the iconic style of indoor shopping center on which Gruen would later stake his reputation. The Gruen effect is also a principle liberally applied in the Providence Place Mall—which is why when I left Zara to go downstairs, I had to go down one set of escalators just to walk all the way around to the other side of the hallway to go down the next tier of escalators. Like a casino, the mall is bright and difficult to leave. Nothing burns out, nothing ever changes. The mall is uniquely well preserved. 

In the beginning, malls were defined, rooted, grounded by their anchors. Massive department stores – most of which were like mini-malls themselves – were absorbed as structural pillars of the enclosed, meta-mall: A Russian Nesting Doll of consumption. Gruen argued that anchor stores would naturally attract their own set of customers—namely, car-driving suburbanites—who would then be drawn into the rest of the mall when forced to walk between them. Come for the Boscov’s, stay for the Windsor, discover the Food Court, so the theory goes. But now, no one comes to the mall for Boscov’s, mainly because Boscov’s closed ten years ago—or at least I thought it did. I guess I must be wrong, however, because now a Boscov’s stands before me, which I pass on my way to Free People. 

Before entering the shop, I pause to marvel at its beautifully curated storefront. The front window features an artfully hung arrangement of gleaming metal suns, each strand exuding a gentle, rosy glow against the glass. I already know that everything inside Free People will likely mirror this display, by which I mean that it will all be perfectly shabby-chic and devastatingly, obnoxiously gorgeous. It will also all be unjustifiably expensive, but I’m feeling pretty indulgent and quite frankly a little desperate. So I enter the store anyway and begin flicking my way through the nearest display of hangers. 

“Why do I always do this?” I perk up, listening to the girl walking past me on her way towards the door – white sweater, flare jeans. She sounds defeated, a little pissed. She turns to her friend. “It’s like a game—waiting for the last minute.” 

The mall is a final place to turn. 

Malls were once backdrops of leisure—designed for hanging out, catching up. But today, malls are almost always venues of urgency. When you don’t remember to place an online order or just can’t be bothered to rifle through the racks at your closest GoodWill, the mall is always there. The same as it always was. 

Suddenly, my eyes make contact with The Top—that is, The Top I saw online (first on Instagram and then on freepeople.com). The Duo Corset Cami, which I now spot lying in the back left corner of the store, has potential to be the perfect Going Out Top. But still, upon seeing it in person, I hesitate. After all, if The Top was served to me on an algorithmic platter, it’s almost an absolute certainty that I wasn’t the only one. I resign that its perfection is destined to be fleeting. Viral, hot, tragic. 

It’s the natural life cycle of the viral Going Out Top, and part of what makes finding a good one so impossible. Because inevitably, many of the most promising Going Out Tops—the Hailey Seamless Plunge Bra Top, the Intimately Free Low Back Seamless Tee, the Victoria Secret Kukombo Floral Mesh Corset Top—all eventually lose their glimmer. Because once I spotted three Modern Love Corsets on three Modern Day Girls at a Modern Day Party. And now my own Out from Under Go for Gold Crop Top makes me feel stale and a little sad. 

The mall may not be dead, but it might be over-exposed. 

I exit the store defeated, and as I wander down the hallway I feel my middle school id begin vying for the reigns. Like I could burst into tears, or yell at my mom, or dramatically slam my door. Because now I have been in the mall for nearly an hour and I have yet to find a singular shirt.  

Over and over, I’ve been told that the “malling of America” wasn’t always so hopeless—but today, I find that increasingly difficult to believe.

‍

If you ever find yourself in the suburbs of Minneapolis, chances are, you’ll also eventually find yourself at the Southdale Center—America’s first mall, opened in 1956; Gruen’s first completed structure of the genre. And you’ll know you’ve arrived at the Southdale Center because it will look exactly like every other mall you’ve ever been to: It’s the mall that all future malls take after. 

The inside of the mall—the enclosed central courtyard, which Gruen called “the garden of perpetual spring”—was modeled after a bustling Viennese marketplace, a quintessential feature of the architect’s former home. Gruen, who bemoaned the suburbs’ lack of central planning, imagined something better for post war America: A town square, a third space, an escape from harsh Minnesota winters. 

Back in Providence, however, I don’t feel particularly worldly at all. As I look below at the hallway this “garden” presumably inspired, I can only see a couple of phone case kiosks, an ad for the National Guard, and a Build a Bear Workshop gleaming in the distance. I look up: In the center atrium, a gigantic banner with a QR code hangs from above. “PROVIDENCE IS Boujée,” it reads. 

The Providence Place Mall was built later than most other malls, first opening its doors in 1999: the year the New York Yankees won the World Series, Bill Clinton was acquitted by the US Senate, and an 18 year old Britney Spears dropped her debut album “...Baby, One More Time.” From the beginning, the opening of the mall was shrouded in controversy. The most expensive development project ever undertaken in the state of Rhode Island, the construction of Providence Place was part of a broader city-led effort to ‘revitalize’ the Providence downtown. 

According to lawmakers at the time, the mall’s construction wouldn’t just create new jobs, but was designed to attract an entirely new market of high end retails shoppers – whose purchases, then in turn, would increase sales tax revenue for the state and maybe, just maybe help transform the newly constructed “riverwalk” into a nearby hub of young, urban life. But the deal also came with costs—namely, substantial tax breaks for developers, massive taxpayer spending, and the threat of rapid gentrification. In 1995, 66% of Rhode Islanders were opposed to the so-called “Mall Deal,” with only 25% expressing support. The mall was built regardless. 

Before the mall’s construction, Boston Globe reporter Robert Campbell wrote an article criticizing the proposed development. “Providence is a paradox,” Campbell concluded in his 1995 article, for which he was later awarded a Pulitzer. “At the very moment when a city is scraping the bottom economically, it often has its best chance for revival, because it's an inexpensive place in which to invest. Providence may be almost there. It may be on the threshold of a new age.” Downtown may be dying, it seems, but downtown will never die: The mall is living proof. But what this life entails, well, that’s an entirely different question.

As I approach Tilly’s, I realize that I’ve never actually been inside of one before. However, the outside looks promising (Gruen effect), so I let myself wander through the doorway and into the nearly deserted interior. As I meander throughout the store, before I know it, I’ve amassed a small armful of hangers. 

In the dressing room, I try on a rust-colored babydoll style tank top with a slightly plunging neckline. A full length shirt, it’s admittedly somewhat conservative for a Going Out Top, but I decide I’ll take it nonetheless. This is actually a really great investment for life post grad, I tell myself, evaluating the top once more in the mirror. 20 was for crop tops and mango pineapple Svedka, I reason, while 22 will be for turtle necks and thoughtfully mulled Merlot. Maybe this is 21. 

Standing alone in the checkout line, however, I feel a lump of consumeristic guilt begin quickening in my chest—the kind that I know will inevitably bubble into a red-hot wave of fast fashion-induced nausea by the time I’ve exited the store. I can already tell that this brewing bout of buyer's remorse will be shameful and self-indulgent—an unavoidable consequence of Giving In and Knowing Better. 

I wish my wounds were beautiful and complicated, I conclude, but instead they’re insecurities that drag me towards the mall. Shallow, tired, juvenile. Smiling, I hand over my SavorOne Rewards credit card to the cashier and sign my name on the pad with a squiggle. After making my purchase, I muster a squeaky “Have a good one!” before exiting the store.

Michael Townsend is banned from the Providence Place Mall. He is banned from the mall for living in it, which seems especially cruel. “Starting in 2003, I committed to the idea of creating a luxury apartment in the mall,” he wrote in a later blog post. And so he did. From 2003 to 2007, Towsend and seven other artists occupied a hidden 750 square foot apartment tucked away in a little known crevice of the Providence Place Mall. The group transformed the once abandoned storage area into a suitable new home (complete with a TV and a Playstation 2), all while remaining just out of sight from mall security. When the group was ultimately discovered in 2007, Towsend had even developed plans to finish the kitchen, add a second bedroom, and install wood flooring. 

Townsend’s journey to the mall allegedly began when he saw a commercial for Providence Place before the Christmas of 2003. What if you could live in the mall forever? The commercial proposed. Gruen didn’t want us to want to leave the mall, Providence didn’t want us to leave the mall, and so, Townsend never left. 

Just like the commercial suggested, the premise of living in the mall embodies a sort of way-gone wonder that the mall once represented. The mall was about freedom, about possibility, hailed as an opportunity for growth. Shopping could be entertainment, a form of leisure, an avenue for self expression. There was a time when the mall was the future, and I think there were times when I felt this way too. 

Between approximately 6th and 8th grade, the mall was the hottest place to be—if memory serves, I think my 8th grade birthday party simply consisted of my friends and I going to the mall. The mall was a utopian-style fever dream of unparalleled tweenage bliss—or, at least it was to the best of my recollection. Despite occasionally being armed with a Vera Bradley wristlet, my friends and I rarely bought anything except for a Starbucks Frappuccino or maybe a “Beautiful Day” hand sanitizer from Bath and Body Works. In middle school, the mall wasn’t about consumption, so much as being consumed. It was merely a pretense for dressing up, being viewed, being known. 

Back in the central hallway of Providence Place, however, the mall today feels overwhelmingly liminal—carpeted and gray. Not convincingly public at all. I would like to say that I’ve simply outgrown the mall—that it stayed the same around me while I’ve, in turn, grown big. Tilly’s bag in hand, however, I don’t feel particularly sophisticated, but raw and a little small. Like the mall’s unthawed a part of me that’s uniquely well-preserved. I am of the mall and the mall is one with me. 

Halfway down the hall, I pause by a bench to pull out my phone. I’ve been checking it periodically, but up until then, it’s been radio silence from Sarah and Emily. But now, Emily has since finished up at the Apple Store (phone still broken), and Sarah is on the prowl for new pants. After briefly coordinating via text, I run off to meet them in Lucky Brand where I find Sarah trying on a pair of jeans. 

After collectively deciding that no jeans should be purchased this day, the three of us turn around to leave. Eventually, we make our way back over towards Boscov’s and once again past the Ardene. EVERYTHING MUST GO the passing storefront reads. Maybe, I think. But the mall will never die. After finishing our journey down the central set of escalators, we trudge all the way back towards Hank where he waits for us in the Northern parking garage, P2 Row 40. I’ll be back another day.