Vintage Hillsdale

Vintage Hillsdale Mall postcard

If like me, you are a fan of funny old public domain short films, and if like me you grew up in San Mateo, you will enjoy this film, "Shopping Can Be Fun: A New Concept in Merchandising". 

This was a public relations video produced for the then only three-year-old Hillsdale Mall in 1957 (I worked at this mall in high school). It's got some great old footage of the mall in its open air, pre-Hot Topic glory. It looks like the mall was also more of a community gathering center at the time, with all sorts of wholesome 1950's family activities. I also really enjoyed voice of the narrator who seems to be the voice of EVERY short film made in the 1950's (Check out the way he pronounces Peninsula, "Penin-chu-la". WHAT??).

In 1980, the mall was changed to the enclosed style that most of us are used to, so you really won't recognize the mall at all from this video (unless you are old enough to remember that, I suppose. I was only two, so, yeah don't remember it). In addition to Macy's what does still exist from the mall's glory days are some of the cool Beniamino Bufano animal sculptures featured in the video. I believe they are all there but I don't recall ever seeing the owl they show in the video so maybe that one got moved. The video is kind of long but the Bufano part starts at the 10:35 mark, worth watching.

Fun fact about Benny Bufano via Wikipedia: Apparently in protest of WWI, he cut off his trigger finger and sent it to then-president Woodrow Wilson. Artists!