A relic of retail
Monroeville Mall is the mall that made me love malls. It hosted the fictional apocalyptic events that would, to this day, make movies about the living dead my absolute favorite horror film genre. It was more influential toward my pop culture tastes than just about anything else during my early years.
Shots of the southwestern mall entrance at the rear of the building. I love the seemingly random staircases that, at least now, lead to nowhere.
I’ve loved horror films from a rather young age. The first zombie motion picture I remember watching as a preteen was the eighties zomedy The Return of the Living Dead. After that, I wanted more. Then, not more than a few months later, I caught the 1978 classic Dawn of the Dead.
1 to 7- JCPenney and its groovy columns all lined up next to the front facing northwestern mall entrance. This store originally housed Gimbels but is now home to JCPenney in its upper two levels with Dick’s on the ground floor. 8 to 10- The outdoor addition named The District viewed from JCPenney.
There was so much to unpack once the credits started rolling. It wasn’t so much the violence or gore that stuck with me, but the gloom and desperation of a post-apocalyptic world. Four people were looking for a place just to survive and they found it at a second generation enclosed retail facility.
Monroeville Mall Mallmanac ca. 1969. View the full PDF version here.
The setting for their survival, Monroeville Mall, itself influenced some of my favorite features of malls from its era and just after. The lush greenery and sunken gardens. Water features with submerged lighting. Large extraneous structures in multiple courts. And ridiculous mall muzak impossible to get out of your head.
The District, a lifestyle addition from 2004.
I was engrossed as I watched those survivors’ building their own little society inside of those walls, just to be dismayed when it was all taken away. I was too naive to catch the commentary on our consumerism and our disposable society at that young age but was still left with that sense of hopelessness and futility.
To this day I get a thrill whenever I rewatch Dawn of the Dead and see that helicopter flying over the original Penney’s followed by shots of the entrances and parking lot lighting apparatuses. And I can’t believe that it took me this long to finally visit.
1- The former Double Tree hotel in the front of Monroeville Mall. It originally opened as a Marriott. 2 to 4- Walking from The District toward what once belonged to Horne’s department store. 5 to 9- The front façade of Macy’s with its gorgeous triple arch entryways. 10- Some of the old school stonework encasing the lower edifice of the building.
It was a sunny and crisp winter morning when I arrived on the number 67 bus from downtown Pittsburgh. It was just after ten in the morning and most of the mall had yet to open. I was dropped off between JCPenney’s old and new locations to begin my exploration.
Monroeville Mall Mallmanac ca. 1980. View the full PDF version here.
Just past a mural featuring a number of Pittsburgh greats from Mario Lemieux to Mister Rogers, I found myself in the westernmost anchor court, at first known as Town Square. Now a JCPenney, this entrance originally hosted New York based Gimbels department store.
1 to 6- The Macy’s store, originally Horne’s, then Lazarus before taking on its present day nameplate. 7 to 10- The double level southeastern mall entrance which was prominently featured in Dawn of the Dead.
Though the signature balustrade railings had been replaced with glass panels, much of the Monroeville Mall featured in Dawn of the Dead was still subtly evident. Some of the more noteworthy elements were the close-fitting assemblage of box skylights in a square pattern that were shown repeatedly in the film.
Monroeville Mall lease plan ca. 2011. View the full PDF version here.
Walking past this court toward the front facing mall entrance next to JCPenney, I encountered Monroeville Mall’s Celebrating our History exhibit. I love that this shopping center embraces its past even though it involved blood thirsty throngs of the undead and biker gangs trashing its corridors.
1 & 2- The walkway just inside the southwestern mall entrance, including the mural of Pittsburgh greats. 3- The JCPenney mall entrance. 4- The corridor leading to the northwestern mall entrance. 5 to 10- The JCPenney court. Formerly called Town Square, this is where the clock tower used to stand.
I was delighted by early seventies shots of the interior, behind the scenes images from the movie and the old timey logo. But one of my favorite items was a certificate from the Guinness Book of World Records for the Largest Gathering of Zombies when 894 of them invaded the Monroeville Mall in 2006.
The unique retro skylights of Monroeville Mall.
There were other understated reminders of the movie that I caught during my visit, like the sets of four box skylights at repeating intervals along the main concourse. But my favorite was the two level, glass encased mall entrance at the building’s southeast corner, though I’d love it if the googie style, flying saucer shaped lighting apparatuses labeled Entrance were still standing.
The western half of the main concourse.
Gone were the gun shop with monkey
music in the background, the bank branch complete with play money thrown all
about and the JCPenney had even moved from its original location. But I was stoked to finally be able to walk
the famous hallway at the end of which was the four survivors’ hidden entrance
to their living quarters.
After a couple of hours I departed Monroeville Mall again on the number 67 bus headed back toward downtown with The Gonk playing on my air pods, content that I had finally visited the most famous Mall of the Dead.
1 to 3- The newly added wing where the original Penny’s was located before moving to the former Gimbels spot. Once the most prominently shown single store in the film, it was demolished to make way for the Cinemark Theaters and additional inline shops. 4 to 10- The maze of hallways leading to Monroeville Mall’s main entrance. The mezzanine at one time overlooked the Ice Palace skating rink.
Monroeville Mall opened in 1969 as a a peer to fellow Oxford developed South Hills Village. In addition to debuting anchors Horne’s to the east, Gimbels to the west and Penny’s in the middle, the 1.13 million square foot fully enclosed and double tiered shopping facility also hosted 150 stores.
Monroeville Mall lease plan ca. 2021. View the full PDF version here.
Also featured in its early days, as well as in the movie, was the Ice Palace ice skating rink. Located on the bottom level where the food court is now, like a lot of mall ice rinks it was eliminated in a 1980s renovation due to upkeep costs, although it was duly missed by mall patrons.
Center Court, once known as Town Center.
During the nineties, much of the mall recognized in the movie was renovated away. The towering clock featuring twelve puppets of different ancestries was removed for a stage while much of the greenery and water features were also eliminated, thus preventing me from being able to pour one out over Roger’s gravesite.
In the mid-aughts Monroeville Mall was acquired by Chattanooga based CBL Properties who then embarked on the facility’s largest expansion to date. This enlargement was headlined by a nearly 100,000 square foot outdoor “lifestyle” center named The District and tacked onto the building’s front.
1 to 5- More shots of Center Court. 6 to 8- The food court. It was added in 1984 where the Ice Palace once was located.
In the early 2010s the structure initially hosting JCPenney, which had moved to a more prominent position in the former Gimbels, was removed for a new wing capped by a 12 theater Cinemark multi-plex. A number of smaller inline stores were added as well.
Monroeville Mall lease plan ca. 2024. View the full PDF version here.
Over the decades there have been a number of changes with the other anchors. Horne’s lasted until the mid-nineties when, upon their 1994 closure, it reopened the following year as Lazarus. In 2005 the nameplates were changed to Macy’s upon their nationwide rebranding.
1 & 2- The first level hallway just inside the double tiered southeastern mall entrance. 3- The skylight over Macy’s court, known as Fountain Square upon Monroeville Mall’s opening. 4 & 5- Macy’s lower level mall entrance. 6 & 7- The upper level corridor leading to the southeastern mall entrance. 8- Macy’s upper level mall entryway.
What was once Gimbels closed their doors in 1986 before being taken over by Pittsburgh based Kauffman’s. The store was then usurped by Boscov’s before their bankruptcy in 2008. Once vacated, JCPenney took over the anchor’s three levels, using the top two for themselves while subleasing the ground level to Dick’s Sporting Goods.
The annex located to the rear of Monroeville Mall next to the famed road that the biker gang rode down.
More recently, Monroeville Mall has been the scene of some real life tragedies. Several people were injured in targeted gunfire in 2015, which resulted in the implementation of a youth escort policy as well as a reputation for being unsafe.
The eastern half of the main concourse.
CBL subsequently embarked on an overall brightening of the interior in an ensuing, but smaller renovation hoping to attract some of its former shoppers back to the forty year old retail destination. Today, though there are a number vacancies, Monroeville Mall seems to be hanging on.
Monroeville Mall Mallmanac ca. 2025. View the full PDF version here.
I can’t stress enough how much I wanted to call this a “dead” mall even though it seems to be doing well enough and all anchor positions are spoken for. Unfortunately, this wish may turn out to be more of a premonition as the result of more recent developments.
The Macy’s Court, originally belonging to Horne’s.
Wal-Mart announced their purchase of the iconic center in January of 2025. By this writing, the website has already been pared down to just the basics without even a mall map on any of its pages. This doesn’t bode well for the future of Monroeville Mall.
Some of the displays at the exhibition of Monroeville Mall’s history.
I had planned my 50th birthday trip to Pittsburgh mainly to visit the early generation classic well before the sale was announced and I’m glad that I did. Walking its renowned concourses for the first time made for a noteworthy experience. And I’m pleased that I finally did it when I did, as there probably won’t be a second time.
Located in the JCPenney Court is the bust and memorial to one of the greatest names in horror film making, George Romero.