Puente Hills Mall and the Promise of Suburban Retail
Before it was a pilgrimage site for movie fans and retail ruin-tourists, Puente Hills Mall was a statement of confidence.
It rose in the mid-1970s at 1600 South Azusa Avenue, a cross-shaped, climate-controlled promise planted in 94 acres of the City of Industry.
The Pomona Freeway had just opened, and the mall was essentially an architectural off-ramp: leave the new highway, enter a new way of spending time and money…