The restaurant you went into first is the pub they actually moved across town to the east side near shopping center named eastchase. The old clock used to be in downtown Montgomery at a bank, its from the 1800s. I took some photos from the doors before in the past for my instagram but man kinda jealous you guys got to go inside! Glad to see it though used to go here as a kid a lot. My dad used to run a ruby tuesdays that used to be inside when I was a baby, which I think is actually the blown out restaurant you guys went into. Great video! Oh yea what was the actual final straw for the mall wasn't all the stores closing but a EF1 tornado hit the building and caused water damage and it was the last straw for them to just call it quits!
@@RangerRickTV To add to the Clock info: That's actually a replica of the clock in downtown Montgomery, made from the same company that did the original with the same molds! So while a replica, it's almost like a direct copy made by the same people- Well... most likely their families. With how old that original clock was.
@@paulzimmerman6058 It was successful for a time, however the surrounding neighborhood went into decline and a newer mall (Eastchase) opened up nearer to the affluent neighborhoods.
I grew up an hour south of Montgomery but my dad live there until 2004 so roughly until I was 9. He use to take me to that mall every Saturday to the Arcade when I would be up visiting, then back then Chuck E Cheese was open across the road. I’m talking 2001-2004 ish. Good memories
This is probably the best Mall adventure I've ever seen! Zero vandalism and just natural decay! So nice to see something not destroyed by human hands. What exactly is still going on in this old Mall to have security cameras and such still working?
I'm used to seeing dead/abandoned malls in Ohio/Pennsylvania/Kentucky region. They are dreadful. Amazing there is not more vandalism here. Nice job capturing this.
I grew up in Denver and our dead malls got demolished and new spaces were built. There’s not many photos left and definitely not much video of our old hang out spots
I used to live nearby and went to this mall every saturday and played in the arcade. A few facts, the mall was expanded in the late 80's, they added a back wing to it. That clock is a newer addition, it used to be a Merry-Go-Round, then they took that out and put a fountain. The clock was way later. That resturant you went into in the beginning was also a newer addition I think, I don't remember that one. This mall started dying about 1990, stores started leaving then. They used the newest back wing for Sheriff offices then, the rest of the mall was abandoned. It's sad to see, but the neighborhood got rough with riffraff and people just went to Eastdale mall with the ice skating rink in the middle.
My dad was stationed at Maxwell Air Force Base from 90-92. You have no idea the memories that I have from Montgomery Mall. I bought new school clothes for my 8th grade year at George Washington Carver middle school from the American Eagle. I remember the Gap faced the food court. I remember buying cassette singles from Musicland. The last time I was at Montgomery Mall was April 1992. It is a shame it went downhill so quickly. It was a beautiful mall the last time I set foot there.
Wow! this was fun to watch. Keep up the great work! The Montgomery mall opened in 1967. There were plans to turn the food court and main atrium into a student run farmers market. and the old retail shops would hold classrooms with private instructors who could teach everything from music lessons, to second languages, to culinary arts. Buses would bring students in from other schools for those lessons.
The door being open like that was a sign. You just can't pass up an opportunity to get into a legendary mall like this one. It is about time this place gets documented before it is too far gone. Well done Rick!!!!
6:08 sensors are footfall counters. They count the number of people flowing through the doors. Retailers, malls, shopping centres use these for a variety of reasons, including attracting tenants, rent setting and to plan services, events etc - such as big sales events - from an era when centre management would know the number of visitors hour by hour.
I got my first Job here 1999/2000 worked at the Great American Cookie Co. This mall was so freaking nice back then! The last year the Mall was over 90% occupied was 2001. I left in 2003 and it was around 75% occupied and going down quick. Lots of crimes and gang activity going on in the Mall. Crazy how in just a couple years time it got so bad. By 2006 it was basically dead. Last time I visited there was only one anchor store open and maybe 5 stores open on the inside and one restaurant open in the food court.
All the memories here. I was just thinking about the singing reindeer heads that were near the cookie store downstairs as you exited during the Christmas season .. we would go once a month because we lived about 45 min away (my granny and my mom and they drug me along.. I didn’t want to go at all because I’ve always hated shopping) BUT the memories of all the things that I saw and the time with my mom and grandma did become significant .. I wish I could go back.
It is surprising to see how "well" preserved this mall is, I mean, leaving aside the fact that it was abandoned for more than a decade, it still transports you to the old days. I am from a country that does not suffer from that massive wave of abandonment of shopping centers that there is in the United States, and to be honest, it makes me sad to see constructions like these being abandoned when if the circumstances were different, it would still be open. Good video!
You’re correct. Mall was almost completely renovated in late 80s. The original flooring was large diamond ♦️ shaped tiles-slate probably-huge! I was around back in the 70s in its heyday and loved jumping diamond to diamond.
Hey North Alabama liver here, just went to this mall and the food court restaurant have caved in, the clock shows the same time, the mello yellow can is still there, tapes inside the security room is jn tact
This mall was renovated in the late 80s or early 90s. I remember bits and pieces of the renovations taking place while performing a Christmas program with my class.
You are so right RanhgerRick. Were I live in Ontario, Canada (Brampton), the city council is planning to have a perfectly good shopping mall (Shoppers World Brampton) which is not experiencing any problems in terms of occupancy demolished to make way for a mixed use zone (residential/commercial) and half of it's tourist designated Bramalea City Centre for a mixed use zone (commercial/residential) which undoubtedly cause the BCC to lose it's tourist and statutory holiday designation.
The first restaurant y'all go into was called The Pub.. the last one, Harper's, was once a Ruby Tuesday and turned into one of the Community College's cooking kitchen for their culinary school. I remember when it was just Montgomery Fair and JC Penny. Thank you for letting us glimpse into the past.
Malls are still alive and well here in Europe, don't know if i will eat my words in ten years but i don't expect a large mall decline in the near or even far future over here. Downtown is dead tough currently for some odd reason...
Hey Rick glad you and chuck got out of there knowing you set a motion detector off. The floor Where that green stuff on the floor it looked Pretty slippery this was a cool video.
The clock looks vintage because vintage clocks were “in” and a popular style. Just looking at the clock, it’s like time stood still at 1:04 AM or PM-and that’s what you see here. Malls like these are greenhouses, since there’s no insulation or air circulation. That’s exactly why you see growth all around (except for where it’s supposed to be, of course). It was mold that was on that leg you saw outside of the Kids Foot Locker, not poo. When was this filmed, with all the cicadas buzzing?
It's really nice to see a mall with no vandalism. The natural decay looked really cool. I haven't seen a Steve and Barry's store in forever. Our mall had one but it went out of business many years ago. I was amazed how the plants were growing on the floor but not in the planters. Your photos at the end of the video are really good.
I am so glad this video was made. I've been trying to get in for years but it was always locked! I used to be a 5 year old kid in the back of zales watching tv while my mom worked. They had a dollar store in there that every one loved. I truly miss this mall and watching this video brought me back to my childhood.
I love the clock. We have a very old one downtown Indianapolis. The fountain is cool would be neat at an estate in the garden. It's so sad to see these malls rot away .I don't like buying clothes and stuff on line. Only shoes are on my safe list
My cousin's that are from Montgomery took me there in the early 70's. They lived walking distance from the zoo. They live in Millbrook now! Their neighborhood went down hill bad! But yes I've spent some time in your neck of the woods when I was little. My family there are the Glasscocks and the Noe's!
It's a Centennial clock. You will find them that look similar sometimes on a main street or park in towns or near a police station or courthouse...where people used to gather. It could mark something from the past....they always have atleast 2 faces. That's a really expensive intricate one. They used to exist for people to set watches to and to remember time marches onward....that one probably marked their hope the mall would be there a hundred years and it was something expensive to show off.
Great video. I love the aesthetics of this mall so amazing 😍. Thanks for taking a risk and explore it! I think because the police station is in the same building many people stay away from here.
Great job, guys. I love urban exploration like this, especially places that haven't been completely wrecked with graffiti. Done a little harmless trespassing myself back in my day. This reminds me of the 1959 movie Journey to the Center of the Earth, where they find the ruins of Atlantis. Urban ruins fascinate me.
Right around the nine minute mark, when you’re looking down the corridor, there’s an old Disney Store on left (film strip by the window and the yellow and orange circles above the entrance). If you have any more footage of it, please post.
The mall may have been built in the 70s, but it's pretty obvious that it was updated in the 80s or 90s. Nothing about it looks 70s. That said, I'm amazed at how well it's been "preserved" especially considering that Montgomery is not a nice area.
This is heartbreaking. Malls today aren't what they used to be in the 1980s and 1990s; big box retailers like Walmart and the Internet (Amazon anyone?) have decimated the traditional shopping mall. The 2008 recession, COVID and now the upcoming recession also hurt malls. The South is also unique in that there's a lot of dead and dying malls scattered throughout the region. I know as I used to live in Rockingham County, North Carolina during the first half of the 1990s (part of the Greensboro metro area) and we had Eden Mall. It used to have a Kmart, Kaybee Toys, a video arcade and more. Nowadays, the mall is pretty much dead as almost every store has closed down.
Looks like a photographic shop at about the 14min mark. I recognise the automatic machines for developing films and printing to papers from the negatives and in the back the room where some manual processing was done. The stink is probably the gone off developer and fixer (I saw some bottles of these you missed to the right at 14:10) they are going to be pretty vile by now - I remember if you mixed fix and developer it produced ammonia and you could have stank out the whole mall. Imagine putting some new batteries in that megaphone and screaming into it and the cops turning up due to the noise and the silent alarm. What would you get done for, I am thinking trespass but would you get arrested and handed a big fine?
9:47 A clock in a mall is rare, especially one that stands out like that one. The thinking was letting people know what time it was made people less likely to keep shopping, as they might have needed to be somewhere.
If you’re a GenXer you grew up around the mall. Millennials never saw the malls best times, the 80s and 90s. My old mall was built in the late 60s and torn down in 2012. The place which cut my hair beginning in the 70s was the same for my sons in the late 90s and 2000s. High school days on weekends we’d go see a movie and play arcade games. I never realized how good we had it. Back in the 80s when you were a 16 yo dude you could girl watch and not be called creepy misogynist. We definitely lived in better times.
I was sort struck between generations I felt like personal I remember mall hey days in 90s when I was a kid ever maybe teenager but down hill for them after that
Yes those were great times pumping a gallon on gas in a car for less then a dollar a gallon and buying an American made pair of buttonfly Levi 501s for $12 a pair And the ladies wanted the guys to look at them and giggle and blush when you gave them that attention The weirdo woman today are very strange and demented
@RangerRickTV I am old school and don't have a presence on the Facebook deadmalls community. I run a nearly 14 year old blog. Here is my link if you would like to check it out. southernretail.blogspot.com
Now i dont know the legality on this, but i have found tapes inside the mall from a shooting in the food court parking lot,. domestic violence cases, and people slipping and falling inside the mall,
I worked at Gayfers here and freidman's, Lane Bryant's, and Kid's Corner! This store was my junior high and high school hang out! I even remember getting caught up in a shootout in the food courts and the managers at a sports store pulled me in to get out of the line of fire. My mama never let me go back to the mall since then. I believe that was 1994😂😂
We still have a mall in Tupelo Ms, but the sears located in it closed a fews years ago. It took up a pretty good section of it. It remains unoccupied to this day. Not sure if it ever will have another tenant, as it continues to deterioratet.
I don't think the Dallas Galleria Mall or Dallas Northpark malls are going away anytime soon. Old people walk in them. Tourists fill them. We have only those 2 malls left. The others have been dead and demolished years ago. I still have 2 of my childhood malls left. I still go to them.
Crazy theres no vandalism even the hvac is fully intact. I would love to save some hvac units cus you cant get original parts anymore for most of those. They are mostly original too. A bunch of those larger units are 40 years old.
My friends and I are planning on taking a trip here this weekend. Do you believe it would be safe and even legal to do so or should we change our plans?
While in a distressed area with the building and parking lot looking distressed, there is an excellent meat and three right across the street called Simply Southern Cafe. The food was really good, and the people there were so nice to us. It’s a place we stop at to eat on the way to vacation in Pensacola.
I went to this mall several times when I was kid. I remember it being so beautiful. The decline had a few factors, there is another mall on east side of city that has an ice skating rink and the two competed healthily for years, that mall was for kids while this mall had more upscale shops, though it still had kids attractions like merry-go-round, build a bear, and arcade. This mall is near I65 on Southern Bypass, the west side of I65 began declining property values back in the 80s, creating bad neighborhoods and stores to close. That decline slowly crept across I65 and eventually pasaed this mall.
Before 2000, the city expanded eastward creating new middle and upper class neighborhoods and most of the major chains left/leaving for a new development in that area further east of the ice rink mall (Eastdale). The new outdoor mall was named East Chase, it began competing with Eastdale which quickened this malls decline. Crime became a huge issue, i think a murder took place. My cousin got her purse snagged in the parking lot and chased the dude down lol. Around 2002, there was maybe 1 anchor left, and several lower income mom and pop type stores sprinkled between vacant shops and dead mall essentials like GNC and Bath&Bodyworks.
Soon after that, more crime, neighborhood got even worse, anchor left, and police stayed at this mall 24/7 for a long time, adding security cameras and blockades. By 2008/9/10 it was sold for the 2nd time. The mayor at that time was trying to clean up the city, many gangs were prosecuted and some neighborhoods in the area began to bounce back.
Another anchor came in and a school, the total mall occupancy was less than 10%. Sometime around this time a tornado hit the mall damaging an already abandoned area. The mall closed, but 2 or 3 tenants with outside entrances stayed. Though some neighborhoods did get better, still in 2024 a few blocks away remain bad neighborhoods, some with abandoned homes, trash and junk dumped in them, so much a 2 lane street is now a tiny trail through the middle of overgrown greenery and piles of old cars and trash. You will see tons of homeless and poverty stricten people in these areas. Some streets no one lives on, and many houses are condemned.
A few interesting points: The clock is from the 1870s/80s and used to hang on the corner downtown of a bank. Anchors like Gayfords and Paresians were smaller department store chains located in the southern states, I think there were less than 5 Paresians in existence. JC Penny and Sears were much cheaper and they were located at the Eastdale mall. Curios how the higher end stores were in the mall close to the more poverty stricken neighborhoods and the more affordable ones was around the upper and middle class areas. I always thought if both malls would have switched anchor stores, Montgomwry Mall would have done better for longer and Eastdale would have died quicker. Eastdale Mall was supposed to compete with this mall but instead complimented it. Eastdale has the ice skate rink. It is still open today, but is considered a dead mall now with low occupancy and discount anchor stores. The main reason Montgomery Mall is in this good of condition is the crime. The crime brought nonstop police and security to the campus. There were several crimes committed next door to this property without getting caught, the properties surrounding the mall also abandoned but without surveillance and security. Many of those buildings have been torn down now. Anyone in the know, knows not to get off of the southern bypass exit on I65 because of the crime. I recently drove through there and saw more people walking and more homeless than I did cars on the road. Thank you for this video, I am no expert on this mall or on🎉 dates so some of my information may not be exactly correct, but to my knowledge it is what I know of this mall. The statues and fountains were so beautiful, and I remember buying candy from that candy machine pyramid back in 1999 and it was stale then. It is probably the same candy!
To recap my usless 800 pages of this mall, Montgomery Mall both died, and closed, but was also preserved because of crime in the area. It is amazing what a little security can do for a property.
That first restaurant was the Copper Kettle!! In all malls in the same spot! D Image was a one hour photo processing place. I used to work at one in Bham. The stink was probably the chemical used to process negatives! Very toxic! Oh and it was a studio also
Honestly, the place has been like this for over a decade+ in terms of access, there's abandoned-era photos from even back in 2010s-era. It's been picked over by people looking for money and obvious valuables, but not systemically vandalized like, say Century III was. Just quietly rotting- uncared for, occasionally documented.
Hope this one isn’t getting demolished anytime soon since they developed the old big stores into something new. This mall is incredible especially with all the stuff left behind
è da un pò di anni che guardo questo tipo di video e mi piacciono molto anche se sono un pò tristi...solitamente li guardo in italiano perchè sono di quel paese ma noto che in tutto il mondo ci sono posti abbandonati.complimenti per il filmato
Those things on the doors you thought were cameras I am pretty sure were part of an old people counter system that detected how many and what time people were coming and going.
😊cool I injoy this, was at a mall in Dothan Alabama not to long ago seem weird after watching a banded ones, made me think, the food court is noore, so I sit and watch people looking up to the skyline hum, don't go to malls really was cool😊
I bet the terrible smell in the back room of the photo place wasn’t *only* the restroom, it was probably also old spilled developing chemicals. Those things are STINKY even when they’re used in a pristine setting.
the current civilization will be remembered as the forgotten...for nothing they produce will survive to leave a trace behind of their existence. so wonderful to watch nature reclaim its rightful place.
I grew up in the '60's and '70's in a town about an hour from Montgomery and remember when Montgomery Mall first opened. Prior to its opening the only shopping centers of any size outside of downtown were another place called Normandale which was very large for its time. Montgomery Mall and the whole area around it fell out of favor when a new shopping center opened called Eastchase beginning in the late '90's. There is a Fire Station (and maybe Police) in the building where Dillards used to be. It is surprising to me that they got in so easily to do the video without incident. The big clock as I recall was originally downtown and was moved to the mall when they did the renovation and expansion back in the late '80's. Either it was moved from in front of a downtown jewelry store or is a replica of that. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.
The restaurant you went into first is the pub they actually moved across town to the east side near shopping center named eastchase. The old clock used to be in downtown Montgomery at a bank, its from the 1800s. I took some photos from the doors before in the past for my instagram but man kinda jealous you guys got to go inside! Glad to see it though used to go here as a kid a lot. My dad used to run a ruby tuesdays that used to be inside when I was a baby, which I think is actually the blown out restaurant you guys went into. Great video! Oh yea what was the actual final straw for the mall wasn't all the stores closing but a EF1 tornado hit the building and caused water damage and it was the last straw for them to just call it quits!
Thanks for filling us in.
When did the mall shut down?
@@RangerRickTV To add to the Clock info: That's actually a replica of the clock in downtown Montgomery, made from the same company that did the original with the same molds! So while a replica, it's almost like a direct copy made by the same people- Well... most likely their families. With how old that original clock was.
oof :/
@@R3dgrey2008
This mall was actually completely overhauled in 1989, nothing you see is original to 1970
I was thinking it looked awfully similar to 80’s decor.
Very true
Looks like the remodel was a waste of money.
@@paulzimmerman6058 It was successful for a time, however the surrounding neighborhood went into decline and a newer mall (Eastchase) opened up nearer to the affluent neighborhoods.
I'm sure we can find something original lol.
I grew up an hour south of Montgomery but my dad live there until 2004 so roughly until I was 9. He use to take me to that mall every Saturday to the Arcade when I would be up visiting, then back then Chuck E Cheese was open across the road. I’m talking 2001-2004 ish. Good memories
This is probably the best Mall adventure I've ever seen! Zero vandalism and just natural decay! So nice to see something not destroyed by human hands. What exactly is still going on in this old Mall to have security cameras and such still working?
Probably because there’s two schools built in some places of the mall
I'm used to seeing dead/abandoned malls in Ohio/Pennsylvania/Kentucky region. They are dreadful. Amazing there is not more vandalism here. Nice job capturing this.
Vandalism don't bother me
Right place right time.
:/
I grew up in Denver and our dead malls got demolished and new spaces were built. There’s not many photos left and definitely not much video of our old hang out spots
I used to live nearby and went to this mall every saturday and played in the arcade. A few facts, the mall was expanded in the late 80's, they added a back wing to it. That clock is a newer addition, it used to be a Merry-Go-Round, then they took that out and put a fountain. The clock was way later. That resturant you went into in the beginning was also a newer addition I think, I don't remember that one. This mall started dying about 1990, stores started leaving then. They used the newest back wing for Sheriff offices then, the rest of the mall was abandoned. It's sad to see, but the neighborhood got rough with riffraff and people just went to Eastdale mall with the ice skating rink in the middle.
Thanks Keith for filling us in.
@@Edmund_Mallory_HardgroveIt is a shame what has happened to America.
My dad was stationed at Maxwell Air Force Base from 90-92. You have no idea the memories that I have from Montgomery Mall. I bought new school clothes for my 8th grade year at George Washington Carver middle school from the American Eagle. I remember the Gap faced the food court. I remember buying cassette singles from Musicland. The last time I was at Montgomery Mall was April 1992. It is a shame it went downhill so quickly. It was a beautiful mall the last time I set foot there.
Wow! this was fun to watch. Keep up the great work! The Montgomery mall opened in 1967. There were plans to turn the food court and main atrium into a student run farmers market. and the old retail shops would hold classrooms with private instructors who could teach everything from music lessons, to second languages, to culinary arts. Buses would bring students in from other schools for those lessons.
The door being open like that was a sign. You just can't pass up an opportunity to get into a legendary mall like this one. It is about time this place gets documented before it is too far gone. Well done Rick!!!!
Thanks JE my thoughts exactly.
Guys, seriously, you should be wearing respirators. All that dampness and mold, you are really putting your health at risk.
6:08 sensors are footfall counters. They count the number of people flowing through the doors. Retailers, malls, shopping centres use these for a variety of reasons, including attracting tenants, rent setting and to plan services, events etc - such as big sales events - from an era when centre management would know the number of visitors hour by hour.
I got my first Job here 1999/2000 worked at the Great American Cookie Co. This mall was so freaking nice back then!
The last year the Mall was over 90% occupied was 2001. I left in 2003 and it was around 75% occupied and going down quick. Lots of crimes and gang activity going on in the Mall. Crazy how in just a couple years time it got so bad. By 2006 it was basically dead. Last time I visited there was only one anchor store open and maybe 5 stores open on the inside and one restaurant open in the food court.
Very sad. Sad to see all those perfectly good chairs and tables going to waste!
Ikr.
@@RangerRickTV make sure to save all the converse shoes you find for me. I'd love to have them
All the memories here. I was just thinking about the singing reindeer heads that were near the cookie store downstairs as you exited during the Christmas season .. we would go once a month because we lived about 45 min away (my granny and my mom and they drug me along.. I didn’t want to go at all because I’ve always hated shopping) BUT the memories of all the things that I saw and the time with my mom and grandma did become significant .. I wish I could go back.
It is surprising to see how "well" preserved this mall is, I mean, leaving aside the fact that it was abandoned for more than a decade, it still transports you to the old days. I am from a country that does not suffer from that massive wave of abandonment of shopping centers that there is in the United States, and to be honest, it makes me sad to see constructions like these being abandoned when if the circumstances were different, it would still be open. Good video!
Driving past Montgomery mall to work every day is so depressing
The flooring doesn’t look like 1970 flooring. It looks like 90s flooring.
You’re correct. Mall was almost completely renovated in late 80s. The original flooring was large diamond ♦️ shaped tiles-slate probably-huge! I was around back in the 70s in its heyday and loved jumping diamond to diamond.
Hey North Alabama liver here, just went to this mall and the food court restaurant have caved in, the clock shows the same time, the mello yellow can is still there, tapes inside the security room is jn tact
This is my childhood mall I miss it so much! 😭 I was 11 when they officially closed it! I had so many good memories here!
Welcome back!
I use to go to this mall as a child…
This mall was renovated in the late 80s or early 90s. I remember bits and pieces of the renovations taking place while performing a Christmas program with my class.
You are so right RanhgerRick. Were I live in Ontario, Canada (Brampton), the city council is planning to have a perfectly good shopping mall (Shoppers World Brampton) which is not experiencing any problems in terms of occupancy demolished to make way for a mixed use zone (residential/commercial) and half of it's tourist designated Bramalea City Centre for a mixed use zone (commercial/residential) which undoubtedly cause the BCC to lose it's tourist and statutory holiday designation.
That mall still had a little bit of power on---I saw multiple lit exit signs. The place sure went downhill fast
Sure did and it's probably one of my faves.
Worked at Ruby Tuesday in 1990 .
The first restaurant y'all go into was called The Pub.. the last one, Harper's, was once a Ruby Tuesday and turned into one of the Community College's cooking kitchen for their culinary school.
I remember when it was just Montgomery Fair and JC Penny. Thank you for letting us glimpse into the past.
Welcome back!
Malls are still alive and well here in Europe, don't know if i will eat my words in ten years but i don't expect a large mall decline in the near or even far future over here.
Downtown is dead tough currently for some odd reason...
Hey Rick glad you and chuck got out of there knowing you set a motion detector off. The floor Where that green stuff on the floor it looked Pretty slippery this was a cool video.
Thanks 👍
The clock looks vintage because vintage clocks were “in” and a popular style. Just looking at the clock, it’s like time stood still at 1:04 AM or PM-and that’s what you see here.
Malls like these are greenhouses, since there’s no insulation or air circulation. That’s exactly why you see growth all around (except for where it’s supposed to be, of course).
It was mold that was on that leg you saw outside of the Kids Foot Locker, not poo.
When was this filmed, with all the cicadas buzzing?
Thank you so much for watching! This was filmed about year ago last summer.
Clock was an addition in late 80s so while not original to the mall-it’s vintage now :)
Great video nice and detailed video too!!! 🤗❤️🤗❤️🤗❤️
It's really nice to see a mall with no vandalism. The natural decay looked really cool. I haven't seen a Steve and Barry's store in forever. Our mall had one but it went out of business many years ago. I was amazed how the plants were growing on the floor but not in the planters. Your photos at the end of the video are really good.
Glad you enjoyed it
We had one in Milwaukee WI and I bought a winter jacket there around late 2008
You filmed this beautifully with great music. Uk 🇬🇧 watcher.
Yooooooo !
Your footage is excellent and I love that you took the time to get slow, beautiful shots of the common areas. Great great video.
Yooooo thanks Unicorn 🦄
I am so glad this video was made. I've been trying to get in for years but it was always locked! I used to be a 5 year old kid in the back of zales watching tv while my mom worked. They had a dollar store in there that every one loved. I truly miss this mall and watching this video brought me back to my childhood.
I went to that mall the last year it was open. It's amazing it's been closed for about 15yrs in such a large metro area and be that intact.
I love the clock. We have a very old one downtown Indianapolis. The fountain is cool would be neat at an estate in the garden. It's so sad to see these malls rot away .I don't like buying clothes and stuff on line. Only shoes are on my safe list
I love it there. !
It's so surreal seeing a place from my childhood like this.
I LOVED Montgomery Mall as a kid.
My cousin's that are from Montgomery took me there in the early 70's. They lived walking distance from the zoo.
They live in Millbrook now! Their neighborhood went down hill bad! But yes I've spent some time in your neck of the woods when I was little.
My family there are the Glasscocks and the Noe's!
It's a Centennial clock. You will find them that look similar sometimes on a main street or park in towns or near a police station or courthouse...where people used to gather. It could mark something from the past....they always have atleast 2 faces. That's a really expensive intricate one. They used to exist for people to set watches to and to remember time marches onward....that one probably marked their hope the mall would be there a hundred years and it was something expensive to show off.
Great video. I love the aesthetics of this mall so amazing 😍. Thanks for taking a risk and explore it! I think because the police station is in the same building many people stay away from here.
I noticed alit of the malls you went to had electric on and the A/C running.Ir was to keep the mold down
WOW a dead mall no vandalism that's amazing
Yes
But now there's some graffiti on it
Great job, guys. I love urban exploration like this, especially places that haven't been completely wrecked with graffiti. Done a little harmless trespassing myself back in my day. This reminds me of the 1959 movie Journey to the Center of the Earth, where they find the ruins of Atlantis. Urban ruins fascinate me.
Thank you!
Right around the nine minute mark, when you’re looking down the corridor, there’s an old Disney Store on left (film strip by the window and the yellow and orange circles above the entrance). If you have any more footage of it, please post.
I don't but it's probably stripped.
There are still malls around, but have to be careful not to let the trash take over.
Yup
The mall may have been built in the 70s, but it's pretty obvious that it was updated in the 80s or 90s. Nothing about it looks 70s. That said, I'm amazed at how well it's been "preserved" especially considering that Montgomery is not a nice area.
Fantastic video!! You gained yourself a new subscriber! 😁
Welcome aboard!
This is heartbreaking. Malls today aren't what they used to be in the 1980s and 1990s; big box retailers like Walmart and the Internet (Amazon anyone?) have decimated the traditional shopping mall. The 2008 recession, COVID and now the upcoming recession also hurt malls. The South is also unique in that there's a lot of dead and dying malls scattered throughout the region. I know as I used to live in Rockingham County, North Carolina during the first half of the 1990s (part of the Greensboro metro area) and we had Eden Mall. It used to have a Kmart, Kaybee Toys, a video arcade and more. Nowadays, the mall is pretty much dead as almost every store has closed down.
*You know it's summer time when you hear them cicadas buzzn real loud at the end of your video.* Those big bugs always remind me of Summer.
Looks like the restaurant scene in the movie from ridgemont high
I loved this mall so much. Loved the arcade and my favorite store was Electronics Boutique. So many memories...
Very nicely put together video and very entertaining as well. Thanks for posting this.
Looks like a photographic shop at about the 14min mark. I recognise the automatic machines for developing films and printing to papers from the negatives and in the back the room where some manual processing was done. The stink is probably the gone off developer and fixer (I saw some bottles of these you missed to the right at 14:10) they are going to be pretty vile by now - I remember if you mixed fix and developer it produced ammonia and you could have stank out the whole mall. Imagine putting some new batteries in that megaphone and screaming into it and the cops turning up due to the noise and the silent alarm. What would you get done for, I am thinking trespass but would you get arrested and handed a big fine?
Hahahaha
9:47
A clock in a mall is rare, especially one that stands out like that one.
The thinking was letting people know what time it was made people less likely to keep shopping, as they might have needed to be somewhere.
I know right. I love this place.
If you’re a GenXer you grew up around the mall. Millennials never saw the malls best times, the 80s and 90s. My old mall was built in the late 60s and torn down in 2012. The place which cut my hair beginning in the 70s was the same for my sons in the late 90s and 2000s. High school days on weekends we’d go see a movie and play arcade games. I never realized how good we had it. Back in the 80s when you were a 16 yo dude you could girl watch and not be called creepy misogynist. We definitely lived in better times.
I was sort struck between generations I felt like personal I remember mall hey days in 90s when I was a kid ever maybe teenager but down hill for them after that
@JohnConnor1984 OCP how has robocop been?
Yes those were great times pumping a gallon on gas in a car for less then a dollar a gallon and buying an American made pair of buttonfly Levi 501s for $12 a pair And the ladies wanted the guys to look at them and giggle and blush when you gave them that attention The weirdo woman today are very strange and demented
@JohnConnor1984 amen
What mall was it?
Love the video, i like how excited are you tbh i would be too this is an amazing find and exploration
I was in this mall all the time growing up. My favorite place was called Diamond Jim's arcade and was located by the food court.
Sweet, I have been hoping this mall would get featured soon. I almost forgot you teased this one a while back.
You in the mall community on fbook?
@RangerRickTV I am old school and don't have a presence on the Facebook deadmalls community. I run a nearly 14 year old blog. Here is my link if you would like to check it out. southernretail.blogspot.com
This is the mall where i first met Santa Claus in 1973 as a 4 year old
Now i dont know the legality on this, but i have found tapes inside the mall from a shooting in the food court parking lot,. domestic violence cases, and people slipping and falling inside the mall,
I worked at Gayfers here and freidman's, Lane Bryant's, and Kid's Corner! This store was my junior high and high school hang out! I even remember getting caught up in a shootout in the food courts and the managers at a sports store pulled me in to get out of the line of fire. My mama never let me go back to the mall since then. I believe that was 1994😂😂
Welcome back!
We still have a mall in Tupelo Ms, but the sears located in it closed a fews years ago. It took up a pretty good section of it. It remains unoccupied to this day. Not sure if it ever will have another tenant, as it continues to deterioratet.
I don't think the Dallas Galleria Mall or Dallas Northpark malls are going away anytime soon. Old people walk in them. Tourists fill them. We have only those 2 malls left. The others have been dead and demolished years ago. I still have 2 of my childhood malls left. I still go to them.
Ya some malls will probably stick around.
We remember as abandoned iconic retailer from montgomery mall?
Crazy theres no vandalism even the hvac is fully intact. I would love to save some hvac units cus you cant get original parts anymore for most of those. They are mostly original too. A bunch of those larger units are 40 years old.
It's a time capsule !
What a great video! Sad to see such a beautiful mall go to ruin! God bless you!
Thanks John
I really want to explore this place! is it still open and are there alarms to alert the police or anything or did you ask for permission?
There is a police station built inside the mall. not sure if it's still open.
My friends and I are planning on taking a trip here this weekend. Do you believe it would be safe and even legal to do so or should we change our plans?
Essentially malls sell us stuff that is not essential.
A massive contributer to unnecessary debt.
You should probably wear respirators in here.
Stopped there during a childhood family trip to Panama City Beach Florida to eat at a cafeteria there on the way down.
I saw the same mall on another TH-cam video taken this week and it’s compeltely destroyed inside
I went to this Mall as a Kid in the late Eighties,Nineties and Early 2000s.
Welcome back!
While in a distressed area with the building and parking lot looking distressed, there is an excellent meat and three right across the street called Simply Southern Cafe. The food was really good, and the people there were so nice to us. It’s a place we stop at to eat on the way to vacation in Pensacola.
Wel.... Welcome back !
here in kansas city, they built a mall when i was a teen and now it has been torn down, this is in the lifetime of a not quite 60 years
I went to this mall several times when I was kid. I remember it being so beautiful. The decline had a few factors, there is another mall on east side of city that has an ice skating rink and the two competed healthily for years, that mall was for kids while this mall had more upscale shops, though it still had kids attractions like merry-go-round, build a bear, and arcade. This mall is near I65 on Southern Bypass, the west side of I65 began declining property values back in the 80s, creating bad neighborhoods and stores to close. That decline slowly crept across I65 and eventually pasaed this mall.
Before 2000, the city expanded eastward creating new middle and upper class neighborhoods and most of the major chains left/leaving for a new development in that area further east of the ice rink mall (Eastdale). The new outdoor mall was named East Chase, it began competing with Eastdale which quickened this malls decline. Crime became a huge issue, i think a murder took place. My cousin got her purse snagged in the parking lot and chased the dude down lol. Around 2002, there was maybe 1 anchor left, and several lower income mom and pop type stores sprinkled between vacant shops and dead mall essentials like GNC and Bath&Bodyworks.
Soon after that, more crime, neighborhood got even worse, anchor left, and police stayed at this mall 24/7 for a long time, adding security cameras and blockades. By 2008/9/10 it was sold for the 2nd time. The mayor at that time was trying to clean up the city, many gangs were prosecuted and some neighborhoods in the area began to bounce back.
Another anchor came in and a school, the total mall occupancy was less than 10%. Sometime around this time a tornado hit the mall damaging an already abandoned area. The mall closed, but 2 or 3 tenants with outside entrances stayed. Though some neighborhoods did get better, still in 2024 a few blocks away remain bad neighborhoods, some with abandoned homes, trash and junk dumped in them, so much a 2 lane street is now a tiny trail through the middle of overgrown greenery and piles of old cars and trash. You will see tons of homeless and poverty stricten people in these areas. Some streets no one lives on, and many houses are condemned.
A few interesting points:
The clock is from the 1870s/80s and used to hang on the corner downtown of a bank.
Anchors like Gayfords and Paresians were smaller department store chains located in the southern states, I think there were less than 5 Paresians in existence. JC Penny and Sears were much cheaper and they were located at the Eastdale mall. Curios how the higher end stores were in the mall close to the more poverty stricken neighborhoods and the more affordable ones was around the upper and middle class areas. I always thought if both malls would have switched anchor stores, Montgomwry Mall would have done better for longer and Eastdale would have died quicker.
Eastdale Mall was supposed to compete with this mall but instead complimented it. Eastdale has the ice skate rink. It is still open today, but is considered a dead mall now with low occupancy and discount anchor stores.
The main reason Montgomery Mall is in this good of condition is the crime. The crime brought nonstop police and security to the campus. There were several crimes committed next door to this property without getting caught, the properties surrounding the mall also abandoned but without surveillance and security. Many of those buildings have been torn down now.
Anyone in the know, knows not to get off of the southern bypass exit on I65 because of the crime. I recently drove through there and saw more people walking and more homeless than I did cars on the road.
Thank you for this video, I am no expert on this mall or on🎉 dates so some of my information may not be exactly correct, but to my knowledge it is what I know of this mall.
The statues and fountains were so beautiful, and I remember buying candy from that candy machine pyramid back in 1999 and it was stale then. It is probably the same candy!
To recap my usless 800 pages of this mall, Montgomery Mall both died, and closed, but was also preserved because of crime in the area. It is amazing what a little security can do for a property.
Wow awesome 👌
Broooo
In the 1970s there was a 1800s victorian revial. Hence the remakes of the victorian furniture
Jmmy 500👍👍🙏🌞🌞🌞🌞🌞
That first restaurant was the Copper Kettle!! In all malls in the same spot!
D Image was a one hour photo processing place. I used to work at one in Bham.
The stink was probably the chemical used to process negatives! Very toxic! Oh and it was a studio also
Welcome back!
Honestly, the place has been like this for over a decade+ in terms of access, there's abandoned-era photos from even back in 2010s-era. It's been picked over by people looking for money and obvious valuables, but not systemically vandalized like, say Century III was. Just quietly rotting- uncared for, occasionally documented.
Man I got a lot of great memories from that place . It actually closed in the early 2000s not sure what year. It was a sad lose for our city
Sorry to hear that but thanks for filling us in.
The decor is late 80s at the earliest. Thwre have definitely been updates.
v cool ty guys. nice to see comments from folks familiar with this place, esp guy that remembers the opening.
It is
Hope this one isn’t getting demolished anytime soon since they developed the old big stores into something new. This mall is incredible especially with all the stuff left behind
I prefer this architecture/colors over the modern stuff
è da un pò di anni che guardo questo tipo di video e mi piacciono molto anche se sono un pò tristi...solitamente li guardo in italiano perchè sono di quel paese ma noto che in tutto il mondo ci sono posti abbandonati.complimenti per il filmato
We still have them, in abundance. More being built / expanded. As popular now as they were back in the day.
Those things on the doors you thought were cameras I am pretty sure were part of an old people counter system that detected how many and what time people were coming and going.
Awesome video! Love the video work. I take it you can’t just walk in anymore?
As of a few months ago you can walk in. Not sure about now tho !
That photo equipment should have been saved
😊cool I injoy this, was at a mall in Dothan Alabama not to long ago seem weird after watching a banded ones, made me think, the food court is noore, so I sit and watch people looking up to the skyline hum, don't go to malls really was cool😊
What will it take to restore Montgomery Mall to its former glory?
Better leadership in that city.
I bet the terrible smell in the back room of the photo place wasn’t *only* the restroom, it was probably also old spilled developing chemicals. Those things are STINKY even when they’re used in a pristine setting.
Wasn't there a Merry go Round in the center ?
the current civilization will be remembered as the forgotten...for nothing they produce will survive to leave a trace behind of their existence. so wonderful to watch nature reclaim its rightful place.
23:07 Pretty neat there is still electricy in this place. Note the exit sign.
Yup! Can you believe it?
Are used to go there when I was five years old. Think it got shut down because the gang violence very sad. I will always remember this mall
Ya, kids these days suck.
I grew up in the '60's and '70's in a town about an hour from Montgomery and remember when Montgomery Mall first opened. Prior to its opening the only shopping centers of any size outside of downtown were another place called Normandale which was very large for its time.
Montgomery Mall and the whole area around it fell out of favor when a new shopping center opened called Eastchase beginning in the late '90's.
There is a Fire Station (and maybe Police) in the building where Dillards used to be. It is surprising to me that they got in so easily to do the video without incident.
The big clock as I recall was originally downtown and was moved to the mall when they did the renovation and expansion back in the late '80's. Either it was moved from in front of a downtown jewelry store or is a replica of that.
Thanks for the trip down memory lane.
Thanks for the info on that. Getting in was too good to be true, but it was.
omg y'all this thing is a work of art... including videos by others 😉
Thanks !
I would absolutely love to have the clock and bird feeders
Go get them