The Southwyck Mall

This is a film portrait of Southwyck Mall, a failing mall on the South Side of Toledo, Ohio. The mall was opened in 1972 and was extremely popular with the suburbanites in the area. I grew up going to the mall and riding the merry-go-round which is its trademark. Today, it's all but gutted, and frankly very depressing, but the carouselle still runs.

This is an excerpt from a feature length documentary called An American Paradise, which explores memories of place and the reasons why people live (and love) where they do.

Category:

Travel & Events

Tags:

• Southwyck
• Mall
• Toledo
• Ohio
• South
• Side
• Reynolds
• road
• Maumee
• ghost
• town
• abandoned
• vacant
• empty
• carouselle
• merry-go-round

[johnnyjohnson]

Thanks for posting this. I have fond memories of going to that mall in the late 80's and early 90's. I remember enjoying Sbarro's at the food court 0:38 and going to Software Etc. (which was on the same side of the mall) to look for Sega Genesis games. It seems that after Montgomery Ward closed down the mall started dying.

[djkinney]

@johnnyjohnson I have the same memories. We must be the same age. I have a brick from the mall after they tore it down. It's a place in Toledo people will talk about for a long time but never know. Like how my parents still talk about Tiedtke's Department Store.

[JaSureOkay]

I wonder what killed it. I lived there 1975-78 and there were really cold winters at that time! It was nice to have a place to walk around, see a movie and get out of the cold!

[djkinney]

What killed it is that the whole area turned minority. The white people got pushed farther out into the suburbs, and no one wanted to come into the "black" mall. So everyone drove all the way to Franklin Park.

[yoshi2560]

@djkinney The area around southwyck is not bad at all, gangs went there in the 90's and fought in the parking lots but they never did in the 2000's, like no1cp i also live down the street from where the mall was and its not bad at all...

[djkinney]

It's all relative. If you are a white professional living deep in the suburbs, anything that isn't a crisply new big box store universe is "bad". And that's how people saw it. Throw in apartment buildings with lower-income or working class people and the white professionals run even faster. I don't mean "bad" in the way that most see it. I mean "bad" in the way that yuppie Toledoans see it.

[mounsteres]

that carsele is now shut down, FOREVER :(

[sonnytsbr]

Did you get any of the demo ? and yes sad to see the mall over run by punk kids ( not a race , but punk kids ) out door malls are the new trend, and Franklin park had better keep it clean or there in trouble also

[robert621982]

blame the former owners for never updatin it! very sad to see it gone lots of good memories. got my first bj in the theater! giggity!

[rooroowilliam1]

@sonnytsbr your right

[rooroowilliam1]

@monkeynuts76 that's true

[yoshi2560]

yeah i know what you mean, the preppy people wouldnt even think of setting foot around here.

[ToolfreakCFH]

All these Southwyck videos are so depressing. I went to this mall all the time in the early 90's

[genescene78]

i spent alot of my teen years at this mall,it used to be the shit,what happened?so sad,i remember the dollar movies,you could hit two up in a day.