BIGMallrat

Bay Fair Mall (or Bayfair), originally Bay Fair Shopping Center, opened between 1957 and 1959. The late 50s saw an explosion of growth in suburbs, and department stores were eager to follow suit. It was a joint venture of Macy's and the Capital Company. The opening act (aka, before I was born) Bay Fair Shopping Center opened in carefully choreographed phases—first with Macy’s in 1957, and then a two-level retail wonderland designed by the ever-futuristic Victor Gruen & Associates. The parking lot flowed right into two different levels. Genius! One side called the Mall Level, the other the Terrace Level, depending on where your dad could find a parking spot. Phase II building, which contained 22 inline shops. By 1959, they had thrown in two sleek pads of stores right in front of Macy’s, turning the place into a full-fledged open-air mall. And not just any mall—the first dual-level center in the West. That meant if you were a kid with a skateboard (don’t judge), it was you...

Long before Amazon Prime and same-day delivery, Oaklanders were promised a shopping experience "a whole century ahead of its time." On September 9, 1965, the MacArthur/Broadway Shopping Center—affectionately known as M/B Center—opened to much fanfare. A full-page ad in the Oakland Tribune heralded it as “the most fantastic one-stop shopping and dining extravaganza in the entire universe!” With no traditional department store anchor, M/B Center dared to be different. Anchored instead by Woolworth’s, it offered a bold, modernist take on retail—wrapped in aluminum, terrazzo, and atomic-era optimism. Among its “space-age” features: A Space Ramp, the region’s first escalator made for shopping carts—decades before multi-level Targets made it mainstream. A quirky shuttle called the Astro-Bus, which ferried shoppers from the mall’s entrance to their parked cars like a theme park ride. Space-Port parking for 1,100 cars—right on the roof. Because nothing said “future” like pa...