Book Review: Alexandra Lange's Meet Me by the Fountain Unlocks the Mall for and in All of Us

By Kate Mazade

There are four malls where I live in Fort Worth, Texas. The first is a struggling ode to the 2000s; the second is also well past its prime and now features over-priced movies, self storage facilities, and frequent parking lot assaults. The third is a newly renovated Hispanic-themed mercado; and lastly we have a luxury outdoor "shopping center" that wouldn't dare to associate itself with the "mall" brand but cannot escape the Google category.

These four malls—each with its own three-season reality show saga—are Fort Worth in a sense. They represent what is important to people who live here—or at least the necessities and inevitabilities of our lives. Like any other place, we need to buy things and we like to walk around.

Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall shows how malls are a necessary and personal piece of each city—and by extension—the residents. Published by Bloomsbury in 2022, it is the latest book by Alexandra Lange, architecture critic and author of The Design of Childhood.

Covered in a retail-themed mid-century postcard and contemporary photo collage, the books opens to an inverted red floor plan—a scarlet wrapped gift of thorough history and experienced insights, interspersed with black and white photographs.

From suburban 1980s teen flicks to current international microcosms, Lange walks through the communal spaces of the mall, detailing the interpersonal scenes of the food court, atrium, anchor department stores, and boutique retailers. Each chapter represents a theme portrayed through a different case study. The descriptions are all at once historical, reported, and observed.

The book outlines the malleability of malls—how they grew, changed, and have to evolve to stay relevant. It tracks the development of suburbs—with all of the socioeconomic baggage that carries—to the pandemic-induced decline of retail centers. Lange describes how the mall is an equalizer of the young, old, disabled, and poor, but doesn’t afford that same courtesy to people of different races.

Lange writes about architecture like a story—with people and plot points, personalities and pitfalls—rather than a pedantic list of events and elitist designs and designers. Her writing is clear and engaging, and it moves the narrative along, feeding in necessary details without getting bogged down by theory.

Despite Lange's hesitancy to write it—concerned with the potentially silliness of the mall as a serious research topic—this book is a must-read. Meet Me at the Fountain looks backward, forward, and within to uncover why we think about malls the way we do and how personal "the mall" is to each of us. The book gives readers a chance to reflect on how the mall has impacted their lives and how it will continue to do so in the future.

In high school, I had a friend who loved going to the mall. I—wanting in style, spending money, and an unshared vehicle—saw little use for it. What I did not understand at the time was that his love for the mall had very little to do with shopping and everything to do with freedom. The sheltered collection of stores offered an escape, independence, and place to be alone in public.

Ten years later, I can appreciate malls for the same reasons he did. Still often lacking in style and spending money—although thankfully no longer sharing a 2001 F150 with my siblings—I find myself window shopping because I want to get a bit lost, take care of what I need to, and hide in plain sight. Because I need to buy something and I like to walk around.

Meet Me by the Fountain is available as a hardback and ebook.