Eastland Mall took up 84 acres of hilltop in North Versailles, Pennsylvania, with parking for 6,000 cars. None of it is there now. A warehouse and a van lot occupy the land.
It opened in 1963 as Eastland Shopping Plaza, with 55 stores on two levels and a Gimbels anchor. The upper shops opened onto a walk that was out in the weather, so in 1973 the center put a roof over it and became Eastland Mall.
Gimbels shut down in September 1986. The department store the mall had been built around was gone, and flea-market tables filled its space, beginning a run at Eastland that lasted more than 15 years. The library on the lower level left in 1995.
The last tenants moved out in 2005 and the mall was demolished by April 2007. For more than 10 years after that the hilltop was open ground. Amazon bought it in 2021 and delivery vans run from it today.
Eastland opened twice in August 1963
Gimbels opened on the hilltop above McKeesport on August 15, 1963. For the next two weeks it was the only thing trading up there.
Eastland Shopping Plaza, the 55-store center built around it, opened on August 29.
Eastland sat at 833 East Pittsburgh-McKeesport Boulevard in North Versailles, Pennsylvania, in Allegheny County east of Pittsburgh.
It opened in 1963 as Eastland Shopping Plaza, was enclosed and renamed Eastland Mall in 1973, and came down in 2007.
An Amazon delivery station occupies the land now.
West Penn Realty Company developed the plaza: $12 million, 84 acres, and parking for 6,000 cars.
Gimbels built its own store inside it and paid $4 million of that total for one building, three stories and 190,000 square feet, with an escalator running up the middle.
The store rose well above the rest of the center, and the rest of the center was only half indoors.
Lower-level shops sat enclosed underneath the upper walk, and the upper walk was open to the sky.
J.C. Penney brought its business up from downtown McKeesport. Immel's, Wander Sales, and Richard's Shoes came from McKeesport too.
A Thorofare supermarket at the western end was the first plaza tenant to open its doors.
A 1,000-seat theater in the parking field
A bank arrived within a month.
Western Pennsylvania National Bank moved its Great Valley branch into the plaza on September 23, 1963, and renamed it the Eastland Branch.
The bigger addition went up outside the shops.
Associated Theatres opened a 1,000-seat cinema on Christmas Day 1964, on ground leased from the shopping center out in the parking field, at a cost of $400,000.
The first scheme was elliptical, with a vaulted roof. Associated changed it before the theater itself went up.
None of it touched the retail corridors.
The theater stood in the parking area, a car wash went up beside it by the end of the decade, and J.C. Penney ran an auto center nearby.
The hilltop now had a use that ran on after the stores shut. Through 1969 the upper shopping level was still open to the weather.
Eastland had started putting on the roof before the fire
Monroeville Mall opened in 1969, less than six miles east, fully enclosed and far larger.
Eastland's upper level was still a walk in the open air, and the center had started roofing it over.
Fire broke out on the morning of June 6, 1973. It hit 27 stores - seven upstairs and 20 below - and caused about $1 million in damage.
But the enclosure was not a response invented after the fire: work on the upper level was already under way.
By November 14, 1973, Eastland Shopping Plaza had become Eastland Mall.
Gee Bee had joined the anchors, and the rebuilt common areas now formed one enclosed interior, with the upper walk under a roof and movement between levels kept inside.
The library took over a record store
The township's new public library moved into the mall in 1975, into the community room, and the room was too small to hold it.
In September it moved again, into the former National Record Mart storefront on the lower level, and took 4,000 square feet behind a shop front.
Gimbels, J.C. Penney, and Gee Bee were all still trading.
Eastland was already reusing retail space there 11 years before Gimbels closed, and it was doing it for a municipal service rather than a shop.
The library stayed until December 1995, when it moved out to the community center beside the municipal building, after 20 years inside the mall.
Chapter 11 came before Gimbels closed
Eastland was already in Chapter 11 when its Gimbels closed in September 1986.
The closing emptied a 190,000-square-foot department store, and no department store took its place.
Benderson Development Company of Buffalo bought the whole property in 1988 for $1.2 million.
The Gimbels building on its own had cost $4 million to put up 25 years earlier.
The old anchors took on other lives. The theater went to dollar shows on February 27, 1987 and ran its last one in the first week of August 1993.
The former Gimbels became a weekend flea market, with stalls inside and outside, and ran for more than 15 years.
In the 1990s the market shifted into the old Gee Bee space. Beer World occupied the former J.C. Penney building.
In the 1990s the anchor spaces held market stalls and a beer outlet.
The last February inside Eastland
The flea market held its last weekend on January 29 and 30, 2005.
At the start of February the vendors were told they had one week to get their goods off the property.
February 15 is Eastland's closing date, and the building was already being emptied when it came.
What they were leaving was in poor shape. Rainwater had to be caught inside.
Cracks showed in the walls, the floor was coming apart underfoot, and pieces of the old Gimbels front had given way.
The mall walks had lost their heat, and the escalator to the unused upper space was boarded shut.
Valley Shoe Repair and Marc Anthony's hair salon had both been part of Eastland since its 1963 opening.
Benderson cancelled the remaining leases and cleared the site instead of leasing it again.
The mall and the theater were gone by April 2007, and the roadside Eastland sign was still standing.
Amazon started shipping in August 2023
The hilltop then sat empty for more than a decade. Benderson's mixed-use plan for it, Eastland Centre, never got built.
In December 2020 the township commissioners approved a 141,400-square-foot warehouse on the land.
The plan named no tenant. It did include charging points for electric delivery vans.
Amazon bought the 46-acre parcel in 2021 for $9 million, from a Benderson subsidiary that had held the property for 33 years.
The building was finished well before it opened, but supply-chain delays held up equipment needed to run the station.
DAE7 went into operation in August 2023. By September, delivery vans were using the site.
The ribbon-cutting came on May 9, 2024, nine months after the first packages moved, and the operation was credited with 500 direct and indirect jobs.
Eastland employed about 800 people at its peak in the 1960s.
Nothing of the mall is left, and the address is the one the mall used. Behind the fence there is employee parking, loading, and van charging.
A driver's shift on the delivery contract starts at 10 a.m. and pays $21.75 an hour.
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