Mall-chitecture

The Lake, Americana at Brand, Glendale

This morning I drove out to Glendale to see Americana at Brand, developer Rick Caruso's mall patterned on The Grove in the Fairfax district. Wow! Americana is three times the size of The Grove, but the same in design. Caruso has constructed Main Street, USA, very similar to Main Street, Disneyland. There's a lake with a dancing waters fountain, kiosks selling food and specialty items, plenty of shops and lots of places to sit down. It's a city within a city. Many of the same stores are in Glendale....Anthropology, Pacific Theaters, Barnes & Noble and more. I did not see any department stores (The Grove has Nordstrom's). I also didn't see a Mac Store or a Crate and Barrel like The Grove has. I'm assuming that many of the larger chains are NOT at Americana, because the Glendale Galleria is right across the street with big chains like Macy's, Penney's and Target.

Trolley, Main St., Americana, Glendale

The architecture at Americana is lovely. You can even live there! There are apartments above the stores in the mall!

Mall architecture has come a long way in the past 40 years. Larry and I call it "mall-chitecture." There's a certain mini-mall look that's trying to be Spanish Mission Revival Style;

Wanna' -be Mission Revival...looks just like The Alamo in Texas!

...another that's trying to be Regency Style

and then there's just plain ugly and really dated.

Rick Caruso has improved the look of the SoCal mall immensely, even if many of the façades are fake. Hey! This is Hollywood, remember? Land of make-believe.