Here's another little gem that shows Hillsdale Mall in San Mateo. No telling the year, but there is a "60" on the back of the card and the parking lot shows a car from the mid-to-late Fifties (confirmation, anyone? Make and model?).
Although my History of San Mateo County class touched a bit on the Hillsdale development, as a whole, I know little about this shopping center. Except for when it was enclosed in 1982 and Nordstrom joined the mall. I also spent a great deal of time here in the late Eighties, when nothing of any important interest took place.
The back of the card reads "Hillsdale, California. Heart of the San Francisco Peninsula. Located on the famous 'El Camino Real,' just 20 miles from San Francisco. This beautiful shopping center offers the newest and most modern shops and stores."
The front of the card shows the Macy's, which is now partially hidden due to a multi-story parking garage. You can also make out a J.J. Newberry on the left. I love the large Hillsdale sign in the foreground, with what looks like to be a giant penis. In actuality, it's the outline of the San Francisco Peninsula. Must have been before some of the landfills :)
Please share your memories about Hillsdale here.
Scott
Read my guide to Hillsdale Mall
Visit the current Website.
See the aerial view.
20 comments:
I was born in San Mateo in 1952, and we lived very near Hillsdale. However, my family moved to the East Bay in 1956, so I obviously have no memories of the place. But I do remember my mother talking about walking there to shop (she didn't drive back then.)
It may have been purchased and postmarked in 1960, but I say it's more like 56 or 57. The car in the parking lot looks like a 55 or 56 model. However, the landscaping still looks quite bare for a mall that would be 6 years old if it was 1960.
Was Hillsdale once considered and marketed as a separate community from San Mateo? I've seen old maps that treated it as such. Was it always in San Mateo city limits or later annexed?
BTW, until the 1970's I think all Macys in the Bay Area had the 3333 ending on their phone numbers.
I don't recall Sears ever closing "for good" only to reopen in the old Emporium building. I thought they made the move after buying the building from Federated. But, I could be wrong.
My memories of my History of San Mateo County class was that Hillsdale was marketed much like other large-scale developments of the time. For example, Westlake Village. Westlake, like Hillsdale, was ultimately annexed by the neighboring town (Daly City in the case of Westlake). If I'm right, Broadmoor Village was NOT annexed by Daly City and still remains unincorporated. Much like San Lorenzo in the East Bay and so on.
Scott
The top floor of the Macy's in Hillsdale opened in 1964.
I moved to San Mateo from Tallahassee FL in 1979. I spent quite a bit of time at the mall between '79 and '86. I remember the open-air mall and the conversion to an enclosed (and much larger) shopping center.
I recently found a great movie on the internet archive that is all about the Hillsdale Mall. The movie is called, "Shopping Can Be Fun: A New Concept in Merchansiding" and was filmed around 1957 - the time of this postcard.
http://www.archive.org/details/Shopping1957
I'd love to see more snapshots from the pre-enclosed era. I remember the Cost-Plus used to have a glass atrium over it's curved underground staircase, and there was a huge "Rainbow Records" across from what is now Good Guys.
Enjoy the flick!
Does anyone know te name of the toystore in te Hillsdale Mall (now long gone) that had a slide that went from the top floor to the bottom floor? On one level was clothing, the other was toys ...
I thought the mall partially enclosed a lot earlier than 1982.
For years I've searched for info on the wonderful old animatronic Christmas displays they would set up in down the middle of the mall... moving reindeer, waving dolls, sleeping santas, etc. They were in little building that kind of looked like glass gazebos.
They did away with them when the mall was modernized. Anyone know where they went? Who they were sold to?
The store with the slide was Melarts.
We moved to Hillsdale area in the late 1950's- I think the photo was a couple years old when the postcard came out.
When we first shopped at Hillsdale Mall:
1) The parking lots all were ground level.
2) The stores on the East end between Macys & Farmers market were not built yet. There was a walkway, but the construction site was boarded off, with small holes to watch the construction.
3) The old Sears store was not remodeled till the 60's, so looked older than the rest of the mall. The auto center was part of the main building.
4) The "farmers market" building was smaller. The grocery had seperate greengrocers, dry goods store, bakery & meat dept. The restaurant area doubled in size when the Emporium was built. On Sundays all the restaurants offered Sunday dinner for $1.
Does anyone know what was on the mall property BEFORE Hillsdale?
Does anyone remember the name of the record store at Hillsdale mall in the early 60's that had booths where you could try out a record before buying it?
Was that Banana Records?
As a kid in the 70's, I recall that wishing they had at the lower leven entry to Macy's (pretty sure it was Macy's). Using a little of that abandoned coinage, we were able to buy some "goodies". Fun times.
I can take you way back on this one. When I was in elementary school starting in 1960, and even before that, my parents used to take me when they went shopping there. Before the Emporium building was constructed, there was another building there called the "Farmers Market" that was more like a packing shed, that was just a big Cafeteria place with a whole bunch of booths selling different types of foods. North of that, there was a Kiddie Carnival set up with rides, including a Corral where kids were allowed to drive Garden Tracors with Briggs and Stratton Engines on them. When I was in Elementary School, after the Cuban Missile Crisis, we were taken down there to the underground part of that center, which is HUGE. That's where all the store inventory was kept and there was a delivery tunnel entrance in the parking lot on the west side (behind Macy's and the other wing of stores that ran parallel to Macy s on that side) that did dual service as the entrance to the designated Fallout Shelters for that area. The real interesting part of that tour though, was finding about all those rounded stone statues of bears, and seals, and rabbits and other animals that seemed to change every once in a while that were in the fountains, and in the Big planter boxes in the walkways between the buildings. Those statues were all done by Bennie Bufano, and when they weren't on display, they were stored in a big fenced in area in one of those tunnels, alongside the 50 gallon drums full of Graham Crackers, Honey, Water, and sand for sanitation purposes as part of the Civil defense program.Bohannon (the developer) collected Bufanos' work and was one of his patrons. As far a the prior question re: the record store where you could go into the Booths and sample the records before buying,that was Peninsula Music,and they actually sold instruments in the other end of the store as well.That place moved south down to the corner once, from one side of the Thom McAnn Shoe store to the other, and then they moved out of the center entirely to a place on El Camino closer to Belmont. I bought a Fender Bandmaster Amp from them in '78 at that new location.
Help!!! I grew up in San Francisco and South San Francisco and was and frequently visited the Hillsdale Mall with my mother and my grandmother. I remember my grandmother would purchase beef from Sears. Was it actually Sears that sold it or a separate company. If so, what was the company called? Btw this was in the 70's.
I remember a store that I think was in Hillsdale - it would have been the early-mid 80s - and it was hanging things such as hammocks, hanging chairs, shelving, etc. Am I remembering this correctly? Anyone know the name? Thanks!
Melarts
And had hatching chicklings under bright lights...remember.
When I was a kid, my family lived in San Mateo and then Foster City 1970-74.
At Christmas I remember Sears had Winnie The Pooh stuff EVERYWHERE, but more so had out front a large Donald Duck playing a song that I believe was "Barnacle Duck The Sailor".
Was Melarts an "upscale" toy shop? My parents used to get my sister Madame Alexander dolls there. I would love to have one of those Corgi Batmobiles they sold.
I don’t know if anything he will see this comment after so many years but...
Does anyone remember a store that you would enter through a curved or spiral staircase going underground and it seemed to sell a lot of 70s maybe early 80s crafty things, like burl wood clocks, macrame, etc.?
This was before the mall was enclosed, and before Cost Plus?
And I LOVED going down the slide at Melarts!
Thanks!
When I was a child, the store at the bottom of the spiral staircase was Cost Plus. Long before the mall was enclosed. We bought all kinds of stuff there.
I would have been a kid at that mall from 1967 on.
Post a Comment