North Star Mall
Posted Thursday, February 14, 2013 12:42 PM

 

The North Star Mall opened in 1960 and my family was probably one of its first visitors.  We were absolutely addicted to going there at least once a week, often on Saturdays but on school nights too, and especially during summer vacations.  I learned the place like the back of my hand.  It was a great place to haul your kids and entertain them for an afternoon or day, and that is exactly what my mother did, and often.   My family was chronically low on money and going to the Mall was free, and cool in the summer to boot.  Our house was never air-conditioned and the mall felt pretty good.  Gas was cheap, so we could drive out there whenever we felt like it and comb through all the stores.

The original mall was probably half the size it is today.  If you entered the original building through the East parking lot, you went up a short flight of stairs directly into Wolff & Marx, a small but high-end department store.  In the early days of that Mall, Wolff & Marx had absolutely no interest for me as I was not into clothes (YET!).  As you cut on through, you came out into the real Mall with its huge cage of very noisy Mynah birds.  You could spend a lot of time just watching the birds hoot and hop.  If I remember correctly, there was a lot of jungle type foliage that surrounded the cage.

Other original stores I can remember from those early days were the big Kress store, chock full of junk and anything you needed.  And cheap too, one of the few cheap stores in the mall.  Across the way was the higher end Guarantee Shoe Company, and the lower-end Lerner’s.  Lerner’s was a lot like JC Penney in those days.  Racks upon racks of clothes, most of it pretty reasonable in price, and a good place for mothers to shop for growing children.  Also close by was Carl’s, another much smaller and pretty high end store.  My mother bought me a little girls’ suit at Carl’s which she probably could not afford.  I absolutely detested it, but she made me wear it anyway.  I am not sure if the Shoe Box had appeared yet, but that was more of a high school store.  It was a favorite of mine when I was at Mac.  They always had the trendiest styles which were the patent leather pumps with square toes and little stacked heels.  On up the mall, we always stopped at the pet store that featured a little bridge you walked over to enter the store.  That was the store with the scarlet macaw just out in the open on his perch.  He was a huge, spectacular creature.  For those who have never been around parrots, they are intensely intelligent and observant.  The minute you walked into that store, the macaw was giving you the once over.  He (or she?) missed nothing.  That pet store also had the most beautiful assortment of dog collars.  A lot of them were velveteen with little jewel studs.  I had never seen such a thing.

At the far west end of the original mall was a Walgreen’s store, I think.  We didn’t go there much, but they did have a lunch counter and you could order hamburgers.  Right across the way from the Walgreen’s was the Luby’s where everyone DID go.

The first huge renovation/addition was the Frost Brothers wing on the east side, close to McCullough.  It had a lot of stores besides Frost Brothers, but the entire wing was named “Frost Brothers AND the mall.”  How snotty, we thought, but it never prevented us from shopping Frost Brothers.   It was simply elegant.  Frost Brothers was arranged “pod” style with the shoes, ladies clothing, fabrics, and lingerie being off in their own little niches.  The staff treated you like royalty, whether you bought anything or not.  How I loved being ushered by an attentive saleslady into their dressing rooms with a three way mirror, wallpaper and an upholstered couch for my mother to sit on while I modeled dresses for her.  It was an expensive store and I was in high school before my mother announced that she could finally afford to actually buy me my first dress from Frost Brothers.  I was simply over the moon.  Up until that moment, all their beautiful clothes were only a dream for me.  I chose a black and white checkered creation with a blouson top, and stand-up collar, very Jackie Kennedy.  The collar was lined in hot pink, and I picked out hot pink hose to wear with it.  I shudder today that I showed up at Mac in that outfit and even had my freshman picture made in it, but I was walking six inches off the ground after we bought it!  Jackie Kennedy would never have worn hot pink hose.

Does anyone remember the Branding Iron Restaurant which was in the Frost Brothers wing, and right next to the Wolff & Marx stairway?  I found out later that the Branding Iron was originally named the Alison, and I met Alison herself at the University of Texas.  Her father had been a San Antonio Businessman and had originally owned the restaurant, which he named after her.  A huge painting of her as a child used to hang in the entryway.  I never once ate there (way too pricey for us), so never saw her portrait.

At some point, Cinema 1 and 2 were built in the East parking lot, right outside the Frost Brothers wing.  For years, they were outside entrance theatres.  There were two screens and two movies to choose from.  We were so impressed.  It was the Cinema theatres that showed “Gone with the Wind” when it was rereleased.  It was packed with people.

In 1968 or 1969, the Joskes wing was built (and Cinema 1 and 2 became inside theatres).  This just about ate up the rest of the property out to McCullough.  We always did a tremendous amount of shopping at Joskes, especially the after Christmas sales.  No longer did we have to drive all the way downtown!

I was no longer living in San Antonio when the iconic boots arrived, but I still visited the mall during my Austin years and found them impressive.  I read later that an enterprising homeless dude actually made one of them his home for quite a few months before he was discovered and run off!

The mall of course is almost unrecognizable today from what it was when we were in high school, but I still love to go there and shop whenever we come to town.  When they did the last be redo of the Frost Brothers wing, they retained and moved a lot of those beautiful stairways that led up to the second level of that wing.  The one I remember best was circular, and was originally placed right in front of the old Frost Brothers entrance.