In Search of Undead Malls

Last month, when I was in the Washington, DC, area for a week, there were two places I knew I wanted to make the time to see: the Washington National Cathedral and the Tysons Galleria shopping center in Fairfax County, Virginia.

The combination of these two particular sights would not be at the top of every tourist’s list, but what can I say? The sacred and the profane have always intersected in interesting, unexpected ways in my life.

The National Cathedral was, of course, as overpoweringly majestic as it had always appeared to me when I saw it during the televised state funerals of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, although I was unprepared for the way its smaller nooks and crannies—the numerous chapels around and under the main nave and altar—invited reverent contemplation. It will be a long time before I see a sight as striking as the bright morning sun piercing the stained glass and casting colorful shards on a statue of George Washington.

Yet, in its own unrepentantly materialistic fashion, my visit to Tysons Galleria was just as memorable—for better and for worse.

“Dead malls”—that is, shopping malls that have entered an irreversible state of deterioration and shopper indifference or disuse—have become an object of popular fascination, but no mall for me is ever truly dead. No matter their condition, malls remain the site of so many memories, especially the malls from my youth in New Orleans. How could I forget my father buying me my first sport coat? Or my mother buying herself a cross necklace? Or my father taking my brother and me along to buy my mother, apropos of nothing, a gift so special she almost never used it (a purse with a bamboo handle)?

Alas, although I have not been to New Orleans in many years, it takes only rudimentary Googling to find that the mall where these memories happened is not what it once was. Some of the stores are gone; others have been reduced in size and scale. This specific mall may not be among the dead, but it is certainly not in the prime of life. 

So, after I completed my tour of the National Cathedral, I went to northern Virginia in search of an America insulated from our present economic woes and reliance on the internet for everything. Having briefly lived in suburban Maryland a few decades ago, I remember Tysons Corner as being a vibrant shopping destination. I remember, too, that the adjacent Tysons Galleria was even tonier. Might I find that shopping malls were not mere Proustian madeleines from my youth?

When I entered the Galleria, the signs were encouraging—at least for a Tuesday afternoon in the spring. Shoppers strolled amiably from one high-end retailer to another: Cartier, Gucci, Lilly Pulitzer, and so on. Seeking nothing in particular, I sauntered inside the Ralph Lauren store, where I was greeted by a courteous clerk who offered bottled water with no expectation of a purchase being made—although a purchase was made, next door, at Ralph’s Coffee: nothing provides mid-afternoon sustenance like quality baked goods bearing the branding of America’s preppiest retailer. So far, so good—very good. 

As I did my window shopping, I kept looking for cracks in the high-polished façade, some sign of the mall’s imminent decline. Even Neiman Marcus, spread out perhaps too generously over three floors, seemed to be in fine form—to my astonishment, given my low expectations for pleasant retail experiences, the fabled department store contained within its hallowed walls a café that served a delicious, seemingly freshly prepared hamburger. 

Finally, though, the spell was broken: As I wandered into Saks Fifth Avenue, I noticed something amiss—or should I say “nothing” amiss? The space had been cleaned out of most obvious merchandise to reveal little but racks and tables and mannequins. As it turned out, I had gone to the Galleria at the same time that Saks, one of its anchor tenants, was shutting down and selling what furnishings remained—part of a batch of store closures that have coincided with its bankruptcy proceedings. (Neiman Marcus is part of the same company, though, for now, it hangs on in northern Virginia.)

This experience was sobering. My shopping mall dreams of days gone by must remain just that—dreams of a past, and we all know what novelist L.P. Hartley said about that place: “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” But I now feel that to have seen the National Cathedral and gone to Tysons Galleria on a single trip provided a useful education to me: The cathedral endures for its eternal truths, while even the fanciest malls, like the fanciest anything, are subject to decline and decay. What are dead malls but a metaphor for the fate that awaits all earthly things?