Burlington Center Mall

Usually the pieces I write for this blog are filled with tragedy and frustration. Sometimes the location has a sordid past; in other instances historic buildings are taken down despite more reasonable courses of action. This write up is nothing like that. The story of the Burlington Center Mall is a rather short and uneventful one.

The Maryland based Rouse Company constructed the 1.5 million square foot building in 1982. The main space of the mall had enough room for 100 stores. Though architecturally unremarkable, there was a small piece of art inside that made the mall unique.

The piece, entitled "The Watering Hole", depicts a young boy on the back of an elephant. The sculpture also included a fountain, a quintessential piece of mall design. According to the artist Zenos Frudakis, "I didn't want to create a taxidermy elephant, because it is poetry in a way you are creating. It is art. It wasn't a particular elephant, it was an abstracted, essential elephant. I wanted to create the form of elephant—an idealized elephant."

Over the next few decades the building became obsolete, as online shopping drew more and more business away from the mall. An entire section of the mall was eventually hidden behind a false wall, to keep the remaining portion as full as possible. Some storefronts also found new non retail use as offices. However it wasn't long before it was announced that the Burlington Center mall was going to be closed for good.

The main portion of the mall was set to be shuttered in March, but a burst water pipe accelerated the closure. The doors were finally shut on January 8th, 2018. The last anchor store closed its doors on September 2nd, and the property was sold. Moonbeam Capital, the new owners of the mall property, plan to demolish the building and replace it with a brand new development. A fundraiser had been set to remove "the Watering Hole" so that it could be donated to a charity. The piece was removed in February of 2019.

North Jersey Training School

The North Jersey Training School once occupied a sprawling 188 acre tract of land in the boro of Totowa. The plan was to provide a community type setting for those born with developmental disabilities, while also offering vocational training.

The state school opened in 1928, operating out of a cluster of attractive brick buildings off of Minnisink road. The campus had a dozen gender segregated dormitory buildings, as well as an auditorium, a chapel, a school building and much more. Like many other similar facilities across the nation, the state school was basically its own town.

By the 1940's, the training school grew to 34 buildings. In 1953, a new hospital building was constructed at the corner of Minnisink Rd. and Vreeland Ave. to replace the existing hospital.

In 1983 the name of the school changed to "North Jersey Developmental Center". The site was then one of seven developmental centers operated by the state of New Jersey.

Just a year after the name of the facility changed, the largest patient population was recorded at the center. 661 patients were calling the large campus home.

Eventually the facility became a burden for the state. In 2012 it was announced that 2 of the states developmental centers were to be shuttered for good. The North Jersey Developmental Center officially closed in 2014. The buildings were immediately boarded up with plywood, and a private security company was hired.

The site sat idle for a few years, but in December of 2017 the state allowed the sale of the property to go through. It was sold for $1 to the boro of Totowa, who then sold it for five million dollars to a developer.

On the night of April 16th, military training exercises started abruptly at the center. The town was told to keep quiet about the plan, leading to a sense of panic among the residents of the neighborhood. The exercises continued for the next two nights.

Demolition of the campus started swiftly, and most of the dormitory buildings were completely leveled by mid 2018. Not only were the buildings gone, but the surrounding land had been blasted and reshaped to better suit redevelopment. At this point the historic original buildings were largely stripped out and left to the elements as work on the property continued.

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By the end of 2018 the entire campus was demolished. Another historic New Jersey campus shuttered, abandoned, and demolished without a thought towards preservation.