A folded advertising brochure for Clearwater Mall in Clearwater, Florida. The front panel is glossy black, ruled across with fine red hairlines and punctuated by solid red blocks top and bottom. Set at an angle across it is a Polaroid-style framed photograph of a silver-grey carrier bag printed with the Clearwater Mall name and swirl logo, spilling out red and yellow gift-wrapped parcels against a deep red background. Beside it, in small white type, reads: "Just your style! That's Clearwater Mall...filled with more stores, more fashions, more excitement than ever!"

Opened out, the black side continues across four panels in the same striped style, each carrying its own tilted Polaroid-framed colour photograph and a short block of white copy. One shows menswear and accessories with the line "Find your fashion style! Featuring 120 fine stores and services something for every taste and budget". The next shows a laid table with china and cutlery, captioned "Highlights for your home & great ideas for giving. Our four major department stores and many gift shops are sure to please." The end panel shows beachwear, sunglasses and a camera, with the words "Florida fun starts here with specialty shops for vacations, for gifts, for that special Florida lifestyle."

The reverse opens to a white and glossy interior. At the left is a printed plan of the mall showing the anchor stores and the enclosed walkways, alongside a panel headed "Just Your Style!" with a short paragraph of visitor information and an address and contact block for Clearwater, Florida. Next to it sits a yellow and blue map of the Florida peninsula marking the mall's location. The centre and right of the sheet carry the full store directory, printed in small type and grouped under headings including Department Stores, Women's Ready-to-Wear, Men's Ready-to-Wear, Special Apparel, Shoes, Specialty, Gifts, Food, Jewelry and Service, each entry followed by a location number. Two further photographs sit along the bottom: a close-up of vinyl records for the line about specialty shops selling records, books, flowers, luggage and tobacco, and a trio of pink, green and cream ice cream cones beside copy inviting shoppers to take a break at the mall's ice cream and snack shops. Colour-block tabs in blue, yellow and green separate the sections.

Background
Clearwater Mall stood on Gulf-to-Bay Boulevard at US 19, a few miles east of downtown Clearwater on Florida's Gulf coast. The enclosed centre was officially dedicated on 8 November 1973, its first anchors having opened through that year: Gayfers in April, J.B. Ivey in August and Montgomery Ward later the same month. A fourth anchor, Burdines, followed in September 1975 as part of the mall's third phase, taking the centre to roughly 927,000 leasable square feet and around one hundred stores. That figure had risen to about 120 stores and services by the middle of 1978, which is the number this brochure advertises.

The mall was a fixture of Tampa Bay shopping for a generation. Asbestos was discovered in the building in 1988 and had to be removed before its first major refurbishment, which was completed in the autumn of 1989. Trade declined through the 1990s in the face of newer competition, and the enclosed mall closed and was demolished in 2002, the site later redeveloped as an open-air shopping centre. Nothing of the original building survives, which is precisely why printed material like this has a following. Mall directories and promotional brochures are collected keenly by the "dead mall" and retail-history community, who use them to reconstruct store line-ups, floor plans and the look of American shopping at its peak, and they are increasingly scarce because they were free handouts never meant to be kept.

Condition
Pre-owned in Good condition. The brochure is complete as a single folded sheet and both sides are clean and bright, with the black panels still glossy and the red and white printing strong. There are the original manufactured fold lines, plus light handling wear consistent with age: gentle creasing and slight rippling across the glossy inner panels, a little softening and minor wear to the outer edges and fold points, and some very light surface marking and curl. The small directory type remains legible throughout. No tears, no missing panels, no writing, stickers, stamps or tape are visible, and the printed map and floor plan are intact. Please note the photographs were taken of the item flat and folded and fine surface marks may be more apparent in hand than on screen. Supplied loose as a single folded paper brochure exactly as shown, with nothing else included. Please review all of the photographs closely, as they show the actual item you will receive and form part of this description.

Who it's for
This will appeal to dead-mall and retail-history enthusiasts, collectors of American shopping centre directories and floor plans, and anyone researching Clearwater, Pinellas County or Tampa Bay local history. It is also a good find for collectors of vintage Florida travel and tourism ephemera, for admirers of late-Seventies and Eighties graphic design with its Polaroid frames and hairline rules, and for collage artists, framers and set dressers after genuine period American print.

Estimated Date
Circa the 1980s, within a firm window of 1978 to 1988. The evidence: the brochure advertises "four major department stores", so it must post-date September 1975 when Burdines opened as the mall's fourth anchor; it states "120 fine stores and services", which matches the store count the mall reached by the middle of 1978; and it shows the original pre-refurbishment centre, so it pre-dates the asbestos removal of 1988 and the major renovation completed in autumn 1989. The Polaroid-frame photography, glossy black stock and fine red rule styling are most typical of the early to mid 1980s, which is where I would place it. No printed date is visible anywhere on the brochure.

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