The Charleston Town Center mall in Charleston, West Virginia, was built in 1983 and was, at the time, the largest downtown mall east of the Mississippi. It attaches to a modest downtown shopping and entertainment complex that includes a civic center developed in the 1950s, now named the Charleston Coliseum Convention Center, which hosts concerts, ballets, plays, and other cultural events. A couple of blocks away from the mall in the opposite direction is Capitol Street, which can be reached by cutting through a pedestrian path across a small plaza that leads to the middle of the block-long strip of storefronts dating back to the late 1800s.
Charleston Town Center Mall, 1980s; Gazette-Mail file photo
This complex, with the mall at its center, was the heart of the Charleston I grew up in, neglected at the same time it was being revived by adjacent new development. In the mid- to late-1990s, I spent countless hours strolling and loitering from the civic center to the mall to Capitol Street. Well before the prevalence of cell phones, a parent would drop me off in good faith that I would return at an agreed-upon time. Until then, I would roam freely among these junctions, bumping into friends and gradually gathering a small crew. One of the only walkable areas in Charleston, the dérive persisted there.
The civic center had an exterior mezzanine built into its facade, with a broad concrete staircase. Kids lounged on the stairs, coliseum style, making themselves visible to potential friends. Alternatively, they ducked underneath the stairs to mingle, make out, smoke, skateboard, and sometimes drop acid in the shadows. As an immigrant teen growing up in the rust belt, becoming an “alternative” mall rat was my attempt at finding a way to fit in without fitting in. My parents were concerned.
Crossing the street from the civic center and entering through the big glass doors of the mall, we would be met by the sound of the fountain luring us toward the mall’s central atrium. Department stores like JCPenney, Montgomery Ward, and Sears anchored this space alongside the smaller boutiques, the Limited and Wet Seal, which were more exciting for teens. Peppered throughout were shops dedicated to selling CDs and cassette tapes, Claire’s for jewelry accessories, and Hot Topic for alternative trends. As grunge flaneurs, we strolled the brightly lit and festive halls under the glares of security guards.
Excerpt from Making Home: Belonging, Memory, and Utopia in the 21st Century, (Cooper Hewitt | The MIT Press, 2025) published in companion with Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial (New York, Nov. 2024-Aug. 2025)
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