Some of us are old enough to remember Mondawmin Mall as a glittery symbol of Baltimore’s future.
Now, it’s the scene of impending abandonment by the big chain retailer Target, and disappointment by those hoping for an economic shot in the arm.
In the late 1950s, when the developer James Rouse was just beginning his ascent into urban sainthood, Mondawmin opened its doors to the accompaniment of an advertising jingle that lingers in memory:
“Mondawmin, Mondawmin
A new shopping day is dawnin’
Just park your car
And there you are
In beautiful new Mondawmin.”
Unfortunately, it was a new day in an area just beginning the uncomfortable racial transitions of that time. As black families moved into Mondawmin’s surrounding neighborhoods such as Ashburton, white families moved out. And today, all these years later, many associate Mondawmin mainly with the dawning of the Freddie Gray riots of two-and-a-half years ago.
And now with the abandonment by Target. The big retailer has announced it will close its Mondawmin operation after the holiday shopping season. It’s one of 12 Target stores closing across the country, and it means the loss of about 150 jobs in a community hungry for employment.
In one sense, the closing of Target seems part of another shift in the country – the decline of retail stores as online operations take over more of the business landscape. You can walk through any mall in America and see stores clinging to life – or empty spaces reminding us of busier days.
In the case of Mondawmin and Target, it’s more than that. Mondawmin wasn’t just a shopping mall – in post-war America, a time when malls were beginning to dominate America’s suburbs, here was a mall inside city limits.
Rouse was sending an early signal. Later would come Cross Keys and Harborplace and Boston’s Faneuil Hall – and national magazines touting him as a savior of cities.
But Mondawmin has struggled for years. The struggle began with For Sale signs dotting all those homes in the surrounding neighborhoods. Those leaving were reaching for the good life in suburbia. Those arriving were reaching for the good life, too. But they didn’t have the same money as those leaving, and have never been able to support places such as Mondawmin the way Baltimore once imagined.
Target’s impending departure is just another reminder of the hopes once pinned to Mondawmin, which disappeared with changes beyond its closed-in walls.
A former Baltimore Sun columnist and WJZ-TV commentator, Michael Olesker is the author of six books. His most recent, “Front Stoops in the Fifties: Baltimore Legends Come of Age,” has just been re-issued in paperback by the Johns Hopkins University Press.
Top photo: Mondawmin Mall by Eli Pousson, Wikimedia Commons
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