DETROIT – If you grew up in Metro Detroit between 1960 and 2000, you likely remember Wonderland Mall.
Wonderland Mall, originally named Wonderland Center, sat on Plymouth and Middlebelt (or Middle Belt) roads in Livonia, Michigan.
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The mall closed in 2003.
READ MORE ABOUT WONDERLAND MALL HERE
We asked you to tell us about your favorite Wonderland Mall memories. We received nearly 2,000 submissions!
Here are some of the memories you shared:
Walked up to Wonderland many times. It was a safe, grownup kind of thing to do when you went to Emerson Jr High. Kresge was a candy destination. Folks moved into the area in 1955 when that area was a farm.
I worked for Hughes and Hatcher doing window displays and would work at the Wonderland location once a month and it mall was all open then. Actually I sort lost my bearings when I went back to that mall years later and found it had be closed in! Loved the open mall feeling much better.
I always enjoyed Wonderland and almost always shopped at Leib Brother's menswear for stretch levis for $9.99.
I remember playing in the arcade that was off the food court. I also got to sit in the original bat mobile there.
In the sixties Mom would take me to the Sanders store. We always sat at the counter and enjoyed a Sanders Hot Fudge Sundae's. Good memories and they just came back while reading this article. Thank you for bringing back some happy memories of my youth.
Going to Federal's at Christmas. Mom gave us a couple bucks to pick out a gift for Dad. It seemed like I always picked out a tie. Poor dad.
Boy, I'm older than dirt, compared to most of these people. My memories are mostly of the open air mall. The anchor stores were: Montgomery Wards and Federals at one end; and Winkelmans and Woolworths at the other. Some of the stores in between were, Kresge's Hughes & Hatchers, Thom McCanns, I think, a Joanne Fabrics, and a couple more girly stores. For a short time, there was a head shop there, called The Village Green (hung out there a LOT). A couple satellite stores, I remember are: a bank and the Red Barn, in the North parking lot; and, of course, Wonderland Cleaners (still there!), to the South. My friends and I, mostly walked up to the mall, and entered the South parking lot through an opening in the wall, from the neighboring subdivision. We'd hang out there, people watching, and begging spare change, in order to have a coffee and/or a banana split at the Woolworths soda fountain. Got moved on by mall security more times than I can count and once got busted by store security, for trying to shoplift 45s from the upstairs record dept. at Montgomery Wards. In the early '80s, my mom worked at the K-Mart that was built in the West parking lot and we'd have lunch at the Big Boy, where, I think, the Woolworth's used to be. I kinda moved away, in '86, and the next thing I knew, a Walmart had been built, in place of the K-Mart, and the rest of the mall was being bulldozed. - Brian S.