Shopping Mall (Object Lessons) - Softcover

Matthew Newton

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1501314823 ISBN 13: 9781501314827

Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017

Synopsis

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.
The mall near Mat thew Newton's childhood home in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was one of the state's first enclosed shopping malls. Like all malls in their heyday, this one was a climate-controlled pleasuredome where strangers converged. It boasted waterfalls, fish ponds, an indoor ice skating rink larger than Rockefeller Center's, and a monolithic clock tower illuminated year-round beneath a canopy of interconnected skylights. It also became the backdrop for filmmaker George A. Romero's zombie opus Dawn of the Dead.
Part memoir and part case study, Shopping Mall examines the modern mythology of the mall and shows that, more than a collection of stores, it is a place of curiosity, ritual, and fantasy.
Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.

About this title

About the Author

Matthew Newton is Associate Editor at Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His work has been published by the Oxford American, the Atlantic's CityLab, Forbes, the Rumpus, Guernica, and Spin.

From the Back Cover

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. From a young age, Matthew Newton understood that the shopping mall offered visitors far more than a collection of stores, it was a place of curiosity, ritual, and fantasy. The mall near Newton's childhood home in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-the state's first enclosed shopping mall, and the backdrop for filmmaker George A. Romero's zombie opus Dawn of the Dead-was a destination that drew hundreds of strangers together at any given time; a climate-controlled pleasuredome that boasted the first indoor ice skating rink on the East Coast; and a place where waterfalls, fish ponds, and a monolithic clock tower were illuminated year-round beneath a canopy of interconnected skylights. Part memoir and part case study, Shopping Mall examines the modern mythology of the shopping mall-not only for the place it holds in our collective memory, but also for the significant role that this ubiquitous public space has played in our shared cultural history.

Edition details

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1501314823
• ISBN 13: 9781501314827
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 160