[URBAN NOTE] "Galleria Mall, recently sold, harks back to a neighbourly era"

[rfmcdonald]

Edward Keenan in the Toronto Star salutes the Galleria Mall.

Walking into Galleria Mall feels a bit like stepping into a time capsule that was filled but not quite sealed in the 1970s.

There’s the pebbled finish on the exterior, of the type you don’t really see anymore, the polished floor that’s a shade of beige you might have seen on a Howard Cosell Wide World of Sports blazer, the arched stucco ceilings, the letters above the computer store written in that old-fashioned font that was used for futuristic tech stuff at the dawn of the personal computer era (the one that looks like the numbers printed on the bottom of cheques).

The building, at Dufferin and Dupont Sts., doesn’t appear to have seen many updates since it was opened on Aug. 15, 1972, but it’s still going, for now, and has some eccentric charms.

In the middle of the large, empty central court, old Portuguese men gather on four haphazardly placed benches to chat the morning away. In lieu of a food court, people get coffee and corned beef subs from the El Amigo Restaurant stand. At the Pagers & Cellular Plus kiosk, in addition to picking up a cordless phone and wiring money by Western Union, you could buy a “fully detailed hand crafted” model of the Titanic.

The big display window labelled “Galleria Smokers Choice” sits empty save for a purple cellophane backdrop. Once, presumably, it contained a display of tobacco products. Now it seems emblematic of its place — a reminder of a different time when people still smoked, urban malls were still trendy, and independently owned stores outnumbered the chains. Something not quite gone, not quite forgotten, but no longer being maintained or updated.

More at the newspaper site.