Another recent arrival at the IM.com archives was a bunch of old Windsor promotional material from the mid to late 1970’s.
The “vintage” Devonshire Mall ad below graced the back cover of the 1976 “Guide to Windsor and district” brochure. I’ll post more from the brochure over the coming weeks.
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leisure world ruled....and the does anyone remember the creepy statue in front of Simpson's. Very Dawn of the dead indeed, Ken.
Besides Sears and Simpsons, what were the other two "major department stores" back then?
What about Dominion Playworld? That place was awesome!
It looks like pretty standard mid-sized indoor mall construction for its day. Basically what they did was build a double sided strip center and put a roof over it, giving it a bowling alley effect. It wasn't until later in the decade that indoor malls began to have side halls and food courts. Build one like that today and it would look very dated......
Ahhh...we had Dominion Playworld back in Hamilton when I was a kid too--the best place to go pre Toys R Us.
As for department stores--the anchors at the time of this ad would've been Simpsons, Sears, Miracle Mart and Smith's (ultimately Marks & Spencer). The two story "box" which was Smith's is still visible from the EC Row, now housing GoodLife and SportChek...and the script "Simpsons" logo is still plainly visible as a "labelscar" on the outside of The Bay.
Oh man, those benches were there forever! Leisure World...I still have my Wonder Woman backpack from there! Do you remember the stop and go that served the best french fries? My mum didn't like it much though as it wasn't the cleanest place and we were pov in the 80s anyway. We had specific stops...Buster Brown, Sears, BiWay, ugh!
Wasn't Sears called back then Simpson Sears?
At one point Sears Canada went by the name Simpson Sears--however, Devonshire had both a Simpson-Sears and a Simpson's...the Simpson's chain was swallowed up by the The Bay which now occupies the Devonshire Simpson's location.
Indeed the benches were there for a long time--I moved to the area in 1993, and though the rest of the decor had changed--those benches remained--as Shoppers and Kinney remained in the locations shown in the photo until Shoppers move to the 2001 expansion and Kinney's disappearance altogether. I see Elks in that photo--another mall stalwart of the 70s/80s.
The Simpson's came later, in the first expansion, around 1974. At which point the Simpson-Sears became a Sears.
The Simpson's came to the mall in the first expansion in 1974. Then the Simpson-Sears was renamed Sears, although you could see the marks of the Simpson-Sears sign behind the Sears one for many years. The Simpsons eventually became the Bay.