Vintage photos of Twelve Oaks Mall

[DetroitPlanner]

12 Oaks was much smaller than Fairlane or Lakeside. It was more like a 2 story Briarwood. Both Fairlane and Lakeside had two interior courts, they also were built with more brutalist queues than 12 Oaks. The upper floors of 12 Oaks were not set back like the other two malls so the second floor is much more enclosed in 12 Oaks. Fairlane differed from Lakeside in that it had a section with three stories. Both Fairlane and Lakeside had been built for five anchor stores, and kept them until relatively recently. The old Crowleys at Lakeside is now an annex of Macy's while Fairlane's Saks was town down and the entire Lord and Taylor wing of Fairlane was walled off. This was borrowed from another Taubman mall named Woodfield in Schaumburg IL. Woodfield was once the largest mall in the world and was listed in the Guiness book of world records until the Edmonton Mall was completed. Now Woodfield is just a big mall, but it is nowhere near the largest any longer.