Retail trends come and go, but one shift that’s taken particularly deep root around my neck of the woods is the slow death of the local shopping mall. Super-regional destinations like Glenbrook, Castleton, and Southlake continue to survive, but smaller-city malls haven’t been so lucky. I’ve written about a few of those places over the years, but today I’ll turn my attention to Mounds Mall of Anderson.
Plans for Anderson’s “Mall Shopping Center” were announced on December 4, 1963, by Melvin Simon and Associates. The $3 million, 225,000-square-foot center would be the first air-conditioned and heated enclosed mall in Indiana1! Anchored by Montgomery Ward and H.P. Wasson, the project promised parking for 2,400 cars and a shopping experience designed for comfort in every season.
Simon made it clear that the shopping plaza, as announced, was only the beginning. “We’ve planned this as an expandable center,” the company explained. “Initially we will have 225,000 square feet, but we expect that we will go eventually to 360,000 square feet of retail and commercial space2.” From the start, Anderson’s mall was meant to grow.
Wasson’s and Ward’s opened in November 1964. Montgomery Ward was a behemoth for its era, with 85,000 square feet under its roof and 35,000 square feet devoted to sales3. It also featured an eight-bay automotive center and an area for outdoor and seasonal goods4. Ward’s was designed to provide everything under one roof on a scale Anderson hadn’t seen before.
That leap forward came at a downtown cost: Mounds Mall’s Monkey Ward spelled the end for Anderson’s original store on Meridian Street, which had served shoppers since 19315. “We have been greatly impressed with the continual growth and potential growth of Anderson and the surrounding area,” said Russell Bygel, Vice President of Ward’s, “and we particularly favored the location and design proposed for the center6.”
Wasson’s, meanwhile, had a history of knowing exactly when to make an innovative move. The company got its start in Indianapolis in 1883, but became the first of the city’s major retailers to break free from the downtown core when it opened a suburban store at Eastgate Shopping Center7. The company was ready to stretch even farther and opened its first store outside of Indianapolis in Kokomo in May 1964. Anderson came next.
Wassons’ move was framed as more than just an expansion. Company president Louis C. Wolf struck a confident tone when he announced that “we intend to take an active and responsible role as new citizens of this progressive community. We’re delighted with the opportunity we now have to become citizens of Anderson8.”
A variety of smaller stores joined Ward’s and Wasson’s when the rest of Mounds Mall opened in April 1965. They included Anderson Bank, Butler Shoes, Commonwealth Loan Company, Dutch Mill Candies, Excel Beauty Salon, Hoyt Wright, Jo-Ann Fabrics, Kinney Shoes, Kroger, MCL Cafeteria, Miller’s Casualaire, Mounds Mall Barbers, Party House, Paul Harris, Regal Shoes, Roth’s, Sears Liquor Store, Super-X Drugs, Three Sisters, Vision Center, Woolworth’s, and Zales’ Jewelers9.
Woolworth’s and Kroger were big deals at the new mall. Woolworth’s took up 18,000 square feet and featured an enlarged soft goods department, an expanded pet center, a yarn shop, and a large luncheonette10. At the north end of the mall, Kroger spanned about 15,000 square feet and offered flowers, yardsticks, and lollipops for free on opening day11.
Beyond its lineup of retailers, Mounds Mall stood out for something far less ordinary: its sunken garden. The area functioned as a central court- a place where antique exhibits, style shows, car displays, and civic events brought the community together in the middle of the complex12.
At first, Mounds had East-Central Indiana almost entirely to itself since real competition nearby was still years down the road: Muncie Mall wouldn’t open to the northeast until 1970, and Castleton Square Mall near Indianapolis wouldn’t arrive for another two years. Mounds’ head start paid off: in 1969, the mall added another major milestone with Anderson’s first full-line J.C. Penney. The mall expanded just like Simon expected, and the new store was a substantial presence- a 134,000-square-foot, two-story building complete with an 8,000-square-foot, ten-bay auto center13.
Mounds Mall underwent a renovation in 1977. Around the same time, Kroger closed and was replaced by Weiler’s Men’s & Ladies14. Just a few years later, in 1980, news broke that H. P. Wasson would shutter all of its locations except for its Kokomo branch15. Montgomery Ward received a lifeline, though, when it was selected for conversion to the new self-service Jefferson Ward concept16.
Fortunately, the old Wasson’s space didn’t sit idle for long. Just a year after the department store went dark, Terre Haute–based Meis -a growing regional retailer that opened new stores in Indiana and Illinois practically every other year- moved into Mounds. The company primarily located its stores in cities of about 80,000 people.
Unfortunately, Montgomery Ward wasn’t to last. A month after Meis opened, Ward’s announced its store at Mounds Mall would close at the end of business on Christmas Eve. “We are making this move for the economic reasons,” said district manager Robert Baker. “We have been unable to make a satisfactory return on investment with this store17.”
Fortunately, Ward’s loss turned into Sears’ big break. After four years of hunting for a modern home, including in a possible new Simon mall on 53rd Street18, Sears finally left its longtime downtown location and moved into the vacant Ward’s space in 1982.
“It’s been a long dry spell, but we finally made it,” proclaimed Sears store manager Steve Murphy. “We’ve had a decline in sales the last couple of years,” he continued, “but we expect that moving to the new location should show a fairly good increase in sales19.”
With Sears joining a lineup that already featured J.C. Penney, Meis, Weiler’s, and Hoyt Wright, many believed that Mounds Mall had finally found its spark20. The new addition was hailed as the boost Mounds Mall needed to keep shoppers from drifting south to Castleton and Indianapolis- a trend that had chipped away at Anderson businesses since the early 1980s21.
Unfortunately, Weiler’s closed in 1983, leaving the former Kroger space vacant22. Meis stepped in and repurposed the location as a Meis Homeworks23. Elsewhere, investment in the center continued: in 1984, J.C. Penney completed a $200,000 remodel of its store that came two years ahead of a mall-wide, $1 million renovation.
Woolworth’s and Hoyt Wright remodeled their stores as part of the project. Butler Shoes, Dr. Tavel, Jean Nicole, Paul Harris, and Zales Jewelers announced plans to update their spaces as well24. That same year, new tenants like Waldenbooks, Shane Company, Finish Line, and a bulk candy store called Have It Your Weigh joined the lineup. By year’s end, Mounds Mall was home to nearly forty stores25.
Still, change was a constant at Mounds Mall and the eighties were no exception. In 1989, the owners of Meis sold the ten-store chain to Elder-Beerman of Dayton, Ohio. The new owners rebranded the anchor and converted Meis Homeworks into an Elder-Beerman Home Store. “Both Meis and Elder-Beerman are traditional department stores,” an Elder-Beerman official explained. “They are similar in many ways26.”
Mounds Mall’s next turning point didn’t arrive until 2001, but it was a big one: J.C. Penney closed in April, followed just a month later by the loss of Paul Harris27. The mall’s new owners, Bayview Financial Corporation of Coral Gables, Florida, moved quickly by demolishing the vacant J.C. Penney building and replacing it with a new multiplex, Mounds Mall 10.
The theater consolidated and superseded two older outparcel cinemas, Mounds Cinema and Mounds Mall Cinema I & II. When Mounds Mall 10 opened on April 16, 2004, moviegoers were greeted with showings of The Ladykillers, Dawn of the Dead, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
The arrival of a new theater wasn’t the only major shift in the early 2000s. In 2003, Elder-Beerman became the subject of a bidding war between The Bon-Ton Stores, Inc. and Wright Holdings, Inc. The Bon-Ton prevailed in the end and folded the longtime Midwest retailer into its portfolio. Soon after Mounds’ stores were rebranded as Carson’s.
Unfortunately, Sears closed its doors in 2012 after a disappointing holiday season28. Unlike Montgomery Ward’s departure decades earlier, though, no new retailer hurried in to fill its cavernous vacancy. Even more shocking, MCL Cafeteria also shut down29. With it went one of the mall’s most enduring businesses.
That sad slate of stores is more or less how Mounds Mall lives on in my memory. Compared to my two hometown malls –Muncie and Concord– it always felt smaller, less polished, and a little behind the curve. That said, it still played its part in my life: I went on dates at Garfield’s restaurant, ducked into a couple stores like Nirvana and Squeeze Play here and there, and saw a ton of movies at the Mounds Mall 10.
What really stuck with me, though, was the atmosphere. The mall always felt dim, like the lights were never turned all the way up. It gave the whole place a hushed, slightly forgotten feeling, even back when it was still alive. Then there was the carpet- deep blue with swirly patterns that felt more at home in a hotel hallway or a convention center than a shopping mall. Carpet in a mall was weird! It softened footsteps, muffled sound, and somehow made the space feel like a relic, even before the rest of the mall started to feel that way, too.
By 2016, Mounds Mall was home to twenty-nine stores and services. They were A Cut Above, A.R.M.O.R. Energy, Affordable Accounting, Amazing Graces’ Cakes, Bath & Body Works, Beautiful Eyes, The Book Nook, Bonzo’s Fun Zone, Carson’s, Carson’s Home Store, Claire’s Boutique, Dr. Tavel, Fabulous Cuts, Finish Line, Garfields, Hibbett Sports, Jesse J. Wilkerson & Associates, LA Nails, Maurices, the Mounds 10, Nirvana, Piercing Pagoda, Sakura Japan, Seals Furniture, Squeeze Play, Tony’s Pizza, Training Academy of Shotokan Karate, Trendin’ Fashions, and the WHBU Special Events Studio.
Sadly, Mounds Mall’s death blow landed in 2018, when Carson’s announced it would close after its parent company filed for bankruptcy30. Owners quickly conceded what many shoppers already knew: the loss was catastrophic. By that point, the center had been reduced to a handful of familiar names like Finish Line, Bath & Body Works, and Claire’s31. It wasn’t enough to sustain a place that had once been a regional draw.
“Unfortunately, the mall has not been profitable for several years,” the owners said in a statement. “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. As many of you know, unfortunately, this is not 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 future32.”
I walked through Mounds Mall with my brother just weeks before the doors were set to close for good. Mall photography is always a surreptitious affair -there’s no lingering, and no obvious camera work allowed- but I managed to capture enough images to tell the story. The photos show a place clearly in its final days.
Mounds Mall officially closed on April 1, 2018. Still, a pair of holdouts -the Mounds 10 Theater and Dr. Tavel- retained exterior entrances and remained open. The arrangement didn’t last long after Dr. Tavel moved to a new office in Applewood Centre. Mounds 10, which had been walled off behind raw, unpainted drywall, closed in October 201933.
Mounds Mall’s future was anything but certain after it went dark. The property’s owners faced about $700,000 in back taxes- an enormous hurdle that had to be cleared just to redeem the property and hold onto it. A year later, the mall sold for just $12,000. The land beneath it fetched $3,000, and the parcel occupied by the cinema went for a mere $2,00034.
Mounds Mall’s new owner announced he would reopen the center as an event center and business incubator35, but that didn’t happen. “I’m disappointed the mall hasn’t opened,” he stated in 2021, “but the world has changed since then. If we could have opened in the beginning of 2020, we had an investor that would have gotten the project moving forward36.”
Unfortunately, legal troubles have continued to dog the Mounds Mall site, which further complicates any hopes of redevelopment. Disputes over who actually owns the parking lot and even the theater fixtures have kept the property tangled in uncertainty.
Now, seven years after the mall closed, there’s little sign of rebirth- just long rows of parked semi-trucks quietly occupying the vast lots where shoppers once came and went. The sixty-year-old facility remains in limbo today. Unfortunately, I’m sure it will never reopen.
At the end of the day, Mounds Mall’s story is a familiar one, but that doesn’t make it any less sobering. What began as a forward-looking experiment as Indiana’s first completely enclosed and climate-controlled shopping mall was a symbol of optimism, convenience, and modern life. Over time, though, it found itself outpaced by shifting consumer habits, retail consolidation, and economic forces far beyond Anderson’s control. The reasons are well-worn, but the result is still heavy: a place built for crowds and connection was slowly hollowed out.
Still, Mounds Mall matters. Even in decline, it leaves impressions on those who remember it in its prime and on those who pass by now on their way to more relevant shopping options north and south. Like so many fading malls across the Midwest, Mounds is a reminder of how quickly our built landscapes can change, and how deeply those places can lodge themselves in memory long after the lights go out.
Mounds Mall may never return in recognizable form, but its footprint still tells an important chapter in Anderson’s story.
Sources Cited
1 Ward, Wasson To Be In New ‘Mall Shopping Center’ (1963, December 4). The Anderson Daily Bulletin. p. 1.
2 (See footnote 1).
3 New Store To Employ 250 People (1964, November 12). The Anderson Herald. p. 7.
4 (See footnote 1).
5 Montgomery Ward Officials Visit City (1964, November 11). The Anderson Herald. p. 13.
6 (See footnote 1).
7 Wasson Story Dates Back To 1883 (1964, November 12). The Anderson Herald. p. 7.
8 New Store To Employ 250 People (1964, November 12). The Anderson Herald. p. 7.
9 Mounds Mall (1965, May 23). The Anderson Herald. p. 21.
10 Woolworth Store To Open (1965, April 6). The Anderson Daily Bulletin. p. 9.
11 Kroger Grand Opening (1965, March 16). The Anderson Daily Bulletin. p. 11.
12 Alexander, M. (1985, October 18). Mounds Mall celebrating 20th birthday this week. The Anderson Daily Bulletin. p. 6.
13 J.C. Penney Company Opens New Mall Store; 66-Year-Old Firm Has 55 Stores In Indiana (1968, December 29). The Anderson Herald. p. 30.
14 Clements, C.W. (1983, June 22). Weilers closes store at mall. The Anderson Daily Bulletin. p. 1.
15 H.P. Wasson store to close (1980, September 11). The Anderson Daily Bulletin. p. 3.
16 5 Local Wards chosen for new store concept (1980, November 23). The Anderson Herald. p. 39.
17 Montgomery Ward Inventory Liquidation Sale (1981, October 28). The Anderson Daily Bulletin. p. 15.
18 Walter Clements, C. (1982, August 19). Sears to move into mall. The Anderson Daily Bulletin. p. 1.
19 (See footnote 17).
20 (See footnote 18).
21 (See footnote 18). .
22 Clements, C.W. (1983, June 22). Weilers closes store at mall. The Anderson Daily Bulletin. p. 1.
23 Hawes, N. (1986, January 10). Mall facelift good news. The Anderson Herald. p. 7.
24 (See footnote 23).
25 Turpin, J. (1986, August 31). Mounds Mall. The Anderson Herald. p. 16.
26 Elder-Beerman completing changes at Meis (1989, August 12). The Marion Chronicle-Tribune. p. 8.
27 Walker, K. (2001, March 7). Penney’s closing raises concerns at Mounds Mall. The Indianapolis Star. p. 25.
28 Palmer, D. (2012, April 29). Anderson says its final goodbye to Sears. The Anderson Herald Bulletin.
29 Moyer, T. (2014, August 28). MCL in Mounds Mall closes after 48 years.
30 Stephens, C. (January 31, 2018) Carson’s in Mounds Mall closing its doors. The Anderson Herald-Bulletin. Web. Retrieved December 28, 2025.
31 Mounds Mall in Anderson closing after 53 years in busines (2-18, March 2). The Indianapolis Business Journal. Web. Retrieved December 28, 205.
32 Montgomery, G. (2018, March 1). Mounds Mall in Anderson to close April 1 after 53 years. WISHTV [Indianapolis]. Web. Retrieved December 29, 2025.
33 de la Bastide, K. (2019, October 11). Mounds Mall theater closed indefinitely after ownership changes hands. The Anderson Herald-Bulletin. Web. Retrieved December 29, 2025.
34 de la Bastide, K. (2019, April 9). Mounds Mall sells at certificate sale for $12,000. The Rushville Republican. p. 3.
35 de la Bastide, K. (2020, January 30). Mall owner making plans for future of facility. The Anderson Herald-Bulletin. Web. Retrieved December 29, 2025.
36 de la Bastide, K. (2021, JJune 17). Owner of Mounds Mall in Anderson hopes to open by 2023. The Anderson Herald-Bulletin. Web. Retrieved December 29, 2025.
This was a well-done bit of history! I would imagine that the declining fortunes of that area took unpleasant trends and made them worse.
I did some Christmas shopping at the old Glendale mall in Indianapolis in its final weeks before closure/redevelopment. It had a zombie-like quality, still open but the few stores that were still open were poorly stocked. It was better as an experience than as a shopping trip.
It was a shock to think the mall is actually 61 years old. That make me feel really old. It was still thriving when we left anderson in 1978, but as the auto industry began folding so did the prospects of the mall. The final death blow was the the pandemic. I suppose it had a pretty good run for a place built on an old city dump
It definitely had its run. Unfortunately, now Anderson struggles to support a Target that closed a few years ago.
It’s always depressing to see how malls have failed all over the country. Cannot believe this one sold for only $12k!
I once worked for Sears in our mall in Springfield, IL, and had occasion to travel to several central IL locations to deliver/pick up merchandise. At that time of course, early 80’s, all were thriving. Sad to see Sears, Monkey Wards, Carsons/Bergners and many other big box stores that have gone by the wayside throughout the years.
Although our mall has consolidated and changed over the past few decades, I cannot remember the last time I set foot in it.
Coincidentally, MCL cafeteria here in Springfield closed just last week! They have been in existence here seemingly forever.
I heard that about MCL! Did you get a chance to visit before it closed?
I must confess, I have never visited MCL. Not too many people here even knew it was closing until after the deed was done.
I haven’t been back in a couple weeks. The last thing I ate was a stuffed pork roast with two sides that was part of the weekly $9.99 special. It was a great value at that price!