My Pilgrimage to Woodfield

Visit Woodfield with me (a Flickr photoset with 34 photos)

On Wednesday, July 28, 2004, I had the pleasure of visiting Woodfield, a super-regional mall located in Schaumburg, Illinois, approximately 25 miles northwest of Chicago's Loop. For a time, Woodfield was the largest mall in the country, and it's currently the fifth largest, still impressive by any measure. No, I didn't fly all the way to Chicago just to see Woodfield; I'll elaborate on why I was in the Midwest in a future post.

I scanned this postcard of Woodfield circa the 1970's from "America's Marketplace: The History of Shopping Centers," an awesome book written by Nancy E. Cohen and published by the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC). To see a larger view, click on the picture or this link.

Woodfield opened in 1971 as one of the country's first super-regional malls. Early malls generally contained one or two department store "anchors" and had between 300,000 and 800,000 square feet of gross leasable area -- Woodfield represented a new generation of malls that contained four or more department stores and 1,000,000 square feet or more of gross leasable area. Today, Woodfield is anchored by JCPenney, Lord & Taylor, Marshall Field's, Nordstrom, and Sears and contains an astounding 2,220,000 square feet of gross leasable area (nearly 300 stores and restaurants).

Woodfield was the brainchild of A. Alfred Taubman, a pioneering mall developer. The company he founded, Taubman Centers, Inc., still owns many of the premier malls in the United States, including Woodfield. Taubman has said that "The whole dynamic changed by virtue of building a very large center with more than 200 stores. It drew from a great distance. Some 250,000 people came on weekends because they could get everything they wanted. We still haven't found a better way to do it."

Here's an aerial photograph of the mall as it appears today that I snatched from Google Earth and appended to show the location of the department store anchors. To see a larger view, click on the picture or this link.

Of course, I brought my digital camera to Woodfield in order to document its majesty. I've uploaded over three dozen photots to my space on Flickr, but allow me to share some of them here as well:

Steven Swain, who has convinced me that he's the East Coast's answer to Mitch Glaser, has commented that the Marshall Field's at Woodfield is one of his favorite store designs. I am compelled to agree with him, especially when I observed the store decked out in Marshall Field's trademark color, green. By the way, Federated ought to "Keep It Field's."

Sears is a fixture in most malls, though it has recently turned to "off-mall" locations (read: former and current Kmart stores) for growth. This photo shows one of the interesting scupltures that adorn Woodfield as well as a seating alcove that probably used to be a designated "smoking court" (I remember similar smoking areas at Metrocenter in Phoenix when I was a kid). Even though you can still smoke in "public" indoor places (like restaurants and bars) in Illinois and most other states -- you can't in California -- Woodfield and most other malls across the country have banned smoking altogether.

The entrance corridors into Woodfield were decidely retro. Apparently the mall hasn't been renovated extensively. While Woodfield may not be entirely "contemporary," it is certainly entirely "classy." The place truly is an elegant monument to modern consumerism.

The expansive and monumental "center courts" of Woodfield and many other early super-reginal malls were rendered obsolete by the energy crises of the late 1970's (imagine how much it costs to keep such huge indoor spaces at 72 degrees year round). Additionally, the provision of modern sculptures seen at Woodfield was rarely duplicated. It's obvious that this mall was meant to be A. Alfred Taubman's showpiece, and it's every bit as impressive today as it must have been in 1971. I wonder if future archeologists will uncover this marvel of the 20th Century and come to find it was built to sell shoes and handbags. The importance of consumerism in our society is almost shameful.

Visit Woodfield with me -- a Flickr photoset (34 photos)

If you're ever in Chicagoland, don't hesitate to find a way to get to Woodfield. It truly is a cathedral of commerce.

Official Woodfield Web Site