As far as I can tell, Heart of Huntsville Mall premiered as an open-air center sometime before 1967 as I have seen advertisements for it in newspapers dated that year. This makes it possibly older than The Mall.

It was located just to the west of downtown on Memorial Parkway, then just a bypass of the small city. It was comprised of four separate buildings, with an unknown anchor on the north, a Sears on the south, a building with only small shops on the east, and more small shops plus Woolworth on the west. The main corridor ran roughly north to south.

Woolworth had been a fixture in downtown for years and its leaving for the mall marked a milestone in Huntsville's suburbanization. Sometime in the seventies or eighties, the mall was enclosed. This would not save it from the 1984 opening of CBL's bohemoth, Madison Square Mall, so large and powerful that it was dubbed the Supermall. It slid, just like its neighbor The Mall just a few miles to the north.

When I moved to Huntsville in 1990, Marketsquare at Heart of Huntsville, as it was known then, was still doing okay. Woolworth was still around while Burlington Coat Factory occupied the old Sears space after the latter had moved to Madison Square. A Gold's Gym had taken the north anchor position.

Banners like this used to hang all over the mall, giving it a bright, colorful and spring like feel. Today, this lone banner hangs over one of the few remaining working lamps.

I remember shopping at the old Woolworth, which was located just behind this blank wall. It seemed the staff was all over the age of seventy and I recall that there was absolutely nothing name brand in the store, which was large but not stocked very well. There was a large coffee shop on the north side of the store toward the mall. I don't think I ever ate there, though. Woolworth wasn't there for very long after my arrival in Huntsville and closed well before the rest of the chain folded.

I also shopped several times at the Burlington Coat Factory in the late nineties. The store seemed overstocked and unkept, but the deals were always good. Eventually, they closed their mall entrance. Finally, sometime around 2000, they shut their doors and moved into an old Home Depot right next to- you guessed it- Madison Square Mall.

Today, although Gold's still does good business, the mall is dead. Dead, dead, dead. A club called 721 occupies the old Woolworth while Parnell's Furniture has taken over the old Sears/Burlington anchor. There is a restaurant and nightclub with only exterior entrances on the east side, but there is nothing inside. Much of the space is taken up by a local Internet Service Provider, Hi-Waay, but the rest is dark, empty and dead.

The mall entrance of Sears first, then Burlington, now Parnell's. It hasn't been open for years.

When Parnell's moved in, they didn't even bother taking the Burlington label off of the doors.

When Parkway City Mall closed, all the walkers headed here. Now, they have been banished. A sure sign the mall is dead.

The polished concrete floors, once sidewalks, lay as the only reminders that this was once an outdoor facility.

Many proposals have been made for the property, which is adjacent to a new Embassy Suites Hotel and to a riverwalk currently under construction. There has been talk of a new arena on the site or an addition to the the Von Braun Center, the city's convention complex. Even the Backstreet Boys saw an opportunity and recently discussed investing in building a Peabody Hotel at the site. Thank goodness it never came about; they wanted an attatched entertainment complex to be called (gulp) Backstreet. So now, the mall's days are numbered. And as new construction surrounds it, the blighted and crumbling old mall will have to go.

Links
-Image from TerraServerUSA.com.
-Website for Madison Square Mall.