Washington Square Mall - (Indianapolis, Indiana)

          First off, forgive me if I had posted this article, and cannot find it, but these pictures are from November 2014, one a seasonal trip to the Indianapolis area. There are several malls around the city, which is already one feature I love, a well saturated market of a mix of such diverse malls, the highest class, to older, more traditional format, to the dead and repurposed, Indy has them all.

          This is the Washington Square Mall on the Southeast side of the city, and likely the next mall to be lost, as business continues to slowdown over the years I have walked this property. The mall across Interstate 65, once known as Eastgate Consumer Mall, closed more than a decade ago, and is used for municipal purposes.

          The Mall opened in 1974 to compete with Eastgate down the road, which opened in 1957. The malls original anchor stores were JCPenney, Sears, William H. Block, L.S. Aryes, and Lazarus (what a great combination, like nothing we see today!).

          When Simon bought the competing property manager in 1996. the mall was renovated by 1999. JCPenney closed in 2003, and has since been Burlington Coat Factory, while the L.S. Aryes store was converted to Macy's around 2005, and from that period to 2010, the mall suffered extravagantly, loosing Old Navy and Macy's, among several small stores.

Former L.S. Aryes/ Macy's

Sears closed in January 2015 after the closure was announced in September 2014.

The Target store occupies the original William H. Blocks, later known as Block's, then Montgomery Ward.

The Dick's Sporting Goods store occupies the former Lazarus store.

Simon lost interest in the mall around August 2014, after the name was wiped from there website, the malls website, and social media pages.

By now, this is all just a dark hallway.

Inside the former L.S. Aryes/ Macy's/ Indy Wholesale Furniture.

Former JCPenney wing.

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