The LaFayette Place Mall is an urban

shopping mall A shopping mall (or simply mall) is a North American term for a large indoor shopping center, usually anchored by department stores. The term "mall" originally meant a pedestrian promenade with shops along it (that is, the term was used to refe ...

and mixed-use complex in downtown

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

. It is now named Lafayette City Center.

Creation and failure

The complex was built in 1984 on a site which had included the old

R. H. White R. H. White was a department store company of the 19th and 20th centuries, based in Boston. The company existed from 1853 to c. 1980; the flagship downtown Boston store was open from 1876 to 1957. R. H. White was founded in 1853. Originally on Wi ...

department store. R. H. White had occupied an ornate six-floor emporium there from 1876 until going out of business in 1957, after which the building was occupied by the Citymart department store (1962–1966) and Raymond's department store (1966–1972), after which the building was torn down and replaced with a parking lot and then LaFayette Place Mall in 1984. The original developer was Mondev (Montreal Development). Lafayette Place originally had a 500-room

hotel A hotel is an establishment that provides paid lodging on a short-term basis. Facilities provided inside a hotel room may range from a modest-quality mattress in a small room to large suites with bigger, higher-quality beds, a dresser, a ref ...

(originally Hotel Lafayette, later a

Swissôtel Swissôtel Hotels & Resorts, commonly known as Swissôtel, is a Swiss chain of luxury hotels which operates 37 properties in 17 countries. The chain is owned by Accor, which acquired FRHI Hotels & Resorts in 2015. The corporate offices for Swiss ...

and then a

Hyatt Hyatt Hotels Corporation, commonly known as Hyatt Hotels & Resorts, is an American multinational hospitality company headquartered in the Riverside Plaza area of Chicago that manages and franchises luxury and business hotels, resorts, and vacat ...

) with of retail space. The project to build the mall also included an adjacent new downtown flagship store for

Jordan Marsh Jordan Marsh (officially Jordan Marsh & Company) was an American department store chain that was headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, and operated throughout New England. It was founded by Eben Dyer Jordan and Benjamin L. Marsh in 1841. The o ...

(now

Macy's Macy's (originally R. H. Macy & Co.) is an American chain of high-end department stores founded in 1858 by Rowland Hussey Macy. It became a division of the Cincinnati-based Federated Department Stores in 1994, through which it is affiliated wi ...

). Located at the less desirable, more decayed end of the downtown shopping district (the same factor that had helped doom R. H. White, Citymart, and Raymond's, along with the continued flight of customers to suburban shopping malls), it never achieved greater than 60 percent occupancy. The interior mall had an unusual circular hallway arrangement which never became popular with shoppers. The long solid-brick facade presented a foreboding, lifeless aspect to pedestrians. It closed as a mall in 1989, ownership devolved to

Chemical Bank Chemical Bank was a bank with headquarters in New York City from 1824 until 1996. At the end of 1995, Chemical was the third-largest bank in the U.S., with about $182.9 billion in assets and more than 39,000 employees around the world. Beginning ...

, and the retail space remained empty for some years.

Later developments

Homart Development Company Homart Development Company, a Chicago-based subsidiary of Sears, was one of the largest builders of shopping centers and malls in the United States from 1959 to 1995. Company history As retail development in the United States shifted away from d ...

worked on redeveloping the property and reopening the mall in 1990s. Patriot Games LLC, a consortium of three companies, bought the property in 1997. Two stories were added and the complex was redeveloped as primarily office space, under the name Lafayette Corporate Center.

State Street Corporation State Street Corporation is an American financial services and bank holding company headquartered at One Lincoln Street in Boston with operations worldwide. It is the second-oldest continually operating United States bank; its predecessor, Un ...

was an anchor tenant, leasing . Patriot Games sold the property in 2002 to The Abbey Group. State Street Corporation left in the 2010s for offices in the

Fort Point Channel Fort Point Channel is a maritime channel separating South Boston from downtown Boston, Massachusetts, feeding into Boston Harbor. The south part of it has been gradually filled in for use by the South Bay rail yard and several highways (specif ...

area. With the downtown shopping area showing new signs of vitality and a burgeoning resident population nearby, Abbey Group in 2014 redeveloped the complex, revived the retail space, and rebranded the complex as Lafayette City Center.

References

External links

Layfette City Center website
1984 establishments in Massachusetts Landmarks in Boston Shopping malls in Massachusetts Buildings and structures in Boston {{Boston-struct-stub