A Tale of Two Mills

BJ wanted to go to Savage Mills, which I understood was a shopping mall not far from Ft Mead, MD.  We found it without much trouble in the nearby town of Savage.  As we approached it I thought we were in the wrong place.  It was a scenic venue in a hollow along the Little Patuxent River.   It was a collection of buildings built from 1816 until about a century ago.  Now it is a collection of arts and crafts dealers and antique shops and used book shops with a nice deli and a first class tavern.   BJ immediately started in on the arts and crafts shops, my mission was to walk off the lunch we had finished a little earlier so I could enjoy a beer in the tavern.  As I walked around I started reading the historic notes about the facility.  The main building was the Carding Building, a 5 story building along the river bank.

The first three stories were built with the stones from the nearby riverbed and when it got to be too difficult to lift the stones above the 3rd floor they started making bricks from the local mud to finish the rest of the building.  The power was furnished by a large mill wheel driven by the river.  This was a mill that took raw cotton and produced canvas sails and other military cloth goods thru the Civil War for the Union.  It remained in production until after WW II!

Several other buildings were added after the Civil War to help in the processing of the cotton and the plant remained in production until about 1947.   After that for several years it was a "Christmas DisplayVillage" and in 1974 it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.  Today the historic complex of buildings with over 175,000 square feet is now home to major collector quality antique centers, home furnishing stores, craft galleries, artist studios, specialty shops, destination restaurants and banquet facilities.

Next we headed for Arundel Mills between Savage Mills and Ft Mead.  Once we found it, it was an eyeopener!  It was a mall, a KING size mall.  Very noticeably larger then any mall we have seen in Orlando or Jacksonville.   The few times I go to a mall I find a parking place outside of the popular locations and walk to the mall.  Well, at this mall the entire parking lot was full.  Full to overflowing; we had to drive around waiting for someone to leave so we could park.   

Arundel Mills

This is a regional mall between Baltimore and Washington, two huge population centers so it has an ulta-large pool of potential customers and that it is nearly a mile long and over a half-mile across!!  There is some separate off site parking to handle the crowds with shuttle running to and fro to the mall itself.  One of the many anchors is a Medieval Times entertainment complex with the knights on horses, etc!!