Comrade Mr. Yamamoto visits
the Dread Dutchess Mall!
Here's a top ho and spiffin short tour of the Dutchess Mall,
located just south of IH 84 junction 13 (US 9) in Fishkill, NY.
Here's a short history of the mall(provided by Thomas Herring of Cold Spring, NY):
The Dutchess Mall was opened in 1974, and was the first indoor shopping mall in Dutchess County New York.  In the years that followed, the South Hills Mall in Wappingers Falls, just South of the Poughkeepsie border, opened up, followed by the Poughkeepsie Galleria right next to the South Hills Mall.  Fierce competition from these two shopping malls, in addition to the arrival of Wal Mart just north of the Dutchess Mall in Fishkill was enough to close down the big anchor stores, and once they were gone, the smaller retailers closed, or relocated in short order,
leaving the mall in the sad state that it is in today
Thomas Herring of Cold Spring, NY provided some information about the mall:
Thee store in the first snap was originally a Mays store, and the Mays family still owns this section of the building.  Over the years there were other tenants, including Gaynes, and ending with Jamesway which had a long, successful run here.  Tom Herring worked in this Jamesway for about four years, during it’s heyday in the early 90’s.  Back then, Jamesway was as big a retailer as Wal Mart is now. He left the store near the end of 1993,
and believes that it closed down during the summer of 1994.
Snap 2 is the old Drug World store-This was relocated to the outlet center a bit farther north on US. 9, between the IH 84 and Wal mart.  Recently, they opened a second store in Cold Spring, after the local drug store went out of business.
Snap 3 is part of the seating area of the old Roy Rogers restaurant. 
That general area of the mall was the “food court” although there weren’t a whole lot of options, two delis, a pizza shop, possibly a Chinese restaurant, and a Mama Brava pizza. 
That was about it for the food court.
Snap 4 is of the flea market-expanded outside on this day with the nice weather.
This is a going concern-you can a few interesting things here-
lots of collectors stuff is sold(NASCAR, baseball cards, etc.)
Snap number 5 is one mall entrance: Thomas Herring describes the entrance setup:
"There were three in the front, and two in the back. There was a long corridor down the center of the mall, connecting everything together.The northern and southern entrances opened into both the front car park and rear car park. The center entrance led into the food court, there was no rear car park entrance t0 the middle of the mall. There were also store entrances at Drug World, and at Service Merchandise(the southern anchor store, where the flea market is held indoors now) and at Jamesway(the northern anchor)".
In the mall's heyday, the car park in snap six was often full,
and overflow parking would go around to the back of the mall.
The outbuilding in snaps 7 and 8 has fared no better than the mall at this point.
The only activity is in a Short Line bus station
(a commuter line that provides service to NYC-recently assimilated by Coach USA)
The history of the building is pretty active-
"The annex building in picture seven was home to Shop Rite, and a Shop Rite owned warehouse club in later years, a liquor store, a cleaners, and a Pergament home center complete with outdoor lumber yard. A big part of the decline of the mall began when Shop Rite moved into the old drive in movie location north of the US 9/NY 52 junction.  After they moved, they opened up a warehouse club for a while, in an apparent attempt to compete with Sam’s Club, but that didn’t last for too long. Eventually, a discount furniture store moved into the old location, but the damage was already done, and there just weren’t enough people shopping that building anymore to keep the furniture store afloat. When Pergament closed down and moved out, their location was taken over by Treasure Island, which had been in the main mall building, but moved to the annex building for more space.  They did well there for a while, and then moved up to the Home Depot Plaza in Wappingers Falls.
Click the thumbnail for a full-sized picture
And inside, It's Delicious!
The north and central entrances to the mall.
As you can see, there are no connections between them, now.
At the north entrance is Charter One Bank-still in business.
Snap 12 shows a common scene: A store doing business as a rubbish bin.
"No One Beyond this Point" Nope. Not a soul.
Guess those market researchers didn't work hard enough.
Thomas Herring sez:
"Now that you mention it though, you know I very seldom saw anyone from RDJ Market Research actually out and doing anything.  I know the research firm in the Poughkeepsie Galleria ALWAYS has people out questioning the shoppers,
I just don’t remember these guys doing a whole lot of that."
And a nice list of things you CAN'T do.
An "Allowed Cloud", if you will(and even if you won't!).
And what's left of commerce in the main, here:
an indoor Flea Market in the southern third of the mall.
This is mostly the old Service Merchandise store.
It's very crowded and hard to get the original feel of the mall.
Here's as best as I can get of a wide shot;
And a neat stall with a load of old computers.
And one of many food concessions.
There's an impromptu Mexican reastaurant here that I like to eat at-
They have Pepsi and Squirt in glass bottles-a rarity and a real treat;
not to mention, they actually have REAL Mexican food.
Well, that's the lot of it. What the future holds for the Dutchess Mall is unclear; At one time there was a proposal to turn part of it into a minimum security County Prison for women(the northern section, I believe), and lately(Oct. 2k4), Home Depot has announced that they want to tear down part of the mall and build a new store, which will send the flea market packing, but as Thomas Herring says: "I guess only time will tell for sure if this plan is going to go through,
as there have been other big plans in the past that just never materialized."
I hope you've enjoyed this exposition.
Be sure to turn out the lights on yr way out and don't forget to empty the rubbish.
Of course, you can always visit the links below: