About halfway down Anderson’s busiest commercial corridor, the abandoned Mounds Mall looms as a relic from another era. Silent and sealed, the clearest symbol of its lost past is the old Carson’s department store. The building’s facade still dominates Scatterfield Road as a reminder of just how quickly the retail landscape can change.
Developed by Melvin Simon & Associates, Mounds Mall followed Evansville’s Washington Square as Indiana’s second enclosed shopping center. The mall opened in April 1965, but anchors H.P. Wasson and Montgomery Ward came online the previous November1. Eventually, Wasson’s became Carson’s.
H.P. Wasson’s story began in 1883, when the company opened its first storefront on Meridian Street in downtown Indianapolis. Over the next several decades, it grew into one of the city’s leading department stores as well as a local retail pioneer: Wasson’s was the first of Indianapolis’s big names to venture beyond the downtown core when it opened a suburban location at Eastgate Shopping Center2.
By the mid-1960s, the brand was ready to spread its wings even farther. The company’s first store outside of Indianapolis, in Kokomo, opened in May 1964. Soon after came the time for another expansion, this time to Mounds Mall. “We intend to take an active and responsible role as new citizens of this progressive community,” proclaimed company president Louis C. Wolf. “We’re delighted with the opportunity we now have to become citizens of Anderson3.”
Sadly, tragedy struck in 1967 when Wolf was killed in a plane crash at just forty years old. His death marked the end of an era for H.P. Wasson and the beginning of a steep decline as Wolf’s family sold the chain to Goldblatt’s, a Chicago department store hoping to expand its reach into new markets4. Unfortunately, the acquisition never found its footing: in 1980, the Mounds Mall store was shuttered along with all but the Kokomo branch5.
The old Wasson’s space didn’t sit idle for long. Just a year after the department store went dark, the lights flickered back on under a new name when Terre Haute–based Meis -a growing regional retailer that opened new stores in Indiana and Illinois practically every other year- moved into Mounds. In 1989, Meis’ owners sold the ten-store chain to Elder-Beerman6. Eventually, a second Elder-Beerman, a “home store,” opened in a space formerly occupied by Kroger.
Like H.P. Wasson’s, Elder-Beerman’s history dated to 1883 when the Boston Dry Goods Store opened in downtown Dayton, Ohio. By 2003, it was the ninth-largest independent department store chain in the country! Unfortunately, it had recently exited bankruptcy. That year, The Bon-Ton purchased the chain. Mounds Mall’s Elder-Beerman became Carson’s in 20117.
The change wasn’t to last: in 2018, The Bon-Ton announced the closure of forty-two stores as part of a turnaround plan the moribund company hoped would resuscitate its fortunes. Among the casualties were Indiana stores in Columbus, Elkhart, Indianapolis, Marion, and Anderson8. The loss of its anchor proved too steep a climb for Mounds Mall to overcome, and the entire fifty-three-year-old shopping center closed on April 1, 2018.
“With the loss of Carson’s the mall owners simply cannot continue to subsidize the operation of the 300,000 square foot enclosed mall going forward,” said the mall’s owners. “As many of you know, unfortunately, this is not something that is unique to our mall as retail centers around the country are struggling. As with other malls around the country, we will be looking to repurpose the mall in the future9.”
More than seven years later, that promise still hangs in the air unfulfilled. The mall is under new ownership, but it remains shuttered. For longtime residents and retail fans, Carson’s and the rest of Mounds Mall aren more than just abandoned buildings. They’re memories suspended in time.
Sources Cited
1 New Store To Employ 250 People (1964, November 12). The Anderson Herald. p. 7.
2 Wasson Story Dates Back To 1883 (1964, November 12). The Anderson Herald. p. 7.
3 (See footnote 1).
4 Goldblatt’s Buys 8 Stores of H.P. Wasson in Indiana (1967, October 31). The Chicago Tribune. p. C7.
5 H.P. Wasson store to close (1980, September 11). The Anderson Daily Bulletin. p. 3.
6 Brown Group Sells Department Stores (1989, April 29). The St. Louis Post-Dispatch. p. 13.
7 Bailey, J. (2011, October 15). Mounds Mall changed Anderson’s shopping patterns. The Anderson Herald Bulletin. Web. Retrieved October 18, 2025.
8 Levy, A. (2018, January 31). Carson’s to close 5 Indiana locations including Circle Center Mall. WRTV [Indianapolis]. Web. Retrieved October 18, 2025.
9 Montgomery, G. (2018, March 1). Mounds Mall in Anderson to close April 1 after 53 years. WISHTV [Indianapolis]. Web. Retrieved October 18, 2025.
I iss that mall. Went there often in the 1970s
It was great back then!