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This article was written on 22 Jan 2010, and is filled under 31 days of Fresno, Fresno CA, Fulton Mall.

Day 22- Fulton Mall Art and Architecture


Have you been down to the Fulton Mall lately? No? Why not?

Its worth the drive downtown just to check out the public art and the cool buildings. I didn’t realize how cool until this summer when the Downtown Associaton had a viewing of a film from the 1960’s called “A City Reborn” and there was an awesome walking tour of the mall before the film was shown.

Did you know we have a sculpture by Renoir? Like, the Renoir? Its one of only 6 in the world like it, and of those six, its the only one you can actually go up to and touch. Pretty rad.

Stan Bitters, an artist who has pieces at the mall, is apparently a distant relative of mine, and every time I go to the mall, my mom reminds me of this. Its a good thing I like his art.

People always say Fresno doesn’t have the skyline of a big city, and our buildings don’t wow them, but I think that many of the buildings on the Fulton Mall are beautiful and definitely wow-worthy. The details that were put into the design to make these buildings stand out blows me away. The extent of my architecture knowledge is solely from reading The Fountainhead, so I don’t think I can really say much beyond “Ooooh pretty!” But I can direct you to The Downtown Association’s Historic Buildings, and awesome Fresno Architecture Blog, Arc Hop.

I love These buildings, and the history behind them. I hope someday we can take care of our mall and bring back that vision in the 60’s when the mall was a hub of entertainment and community activity. I wish I could have seen it in its heyday.

(Photo by me of the Bank of Italy building.)

6 Comments

  1. cesar
    January 22, 2010

    My special lady-friend and I intend on having some pictures taken downtown, specifically fulton, but also the water tower, the veteran's memorial building, and etc.
    I went to the county recorder's office today and the inside of that building is incredible.

  2. Smokey Behr
    January 23, 2010

    Cesar: Not only are the outsides of many of the buildings spectacular, but as you've seen from the inside of the Hall of Records, the interiors are great, too. The Grand Ballroom at the top of the Trade Center is one of those semi-lost treasures. The Warnor's Theater is incredible inside (Thanks, RMC2 and the rest of the Caglia family) and if we could get into the Bank of Italy building, you'd see samples of amazing work in there as well.

  3. archop
    January 24, 2010

    Our architecture truly is fantastic.

  4. R
    January 26, 2010

    Fulton Mall brings back many fond childhood memories for me. The Fulton Mall and many areas around Downtown Fresno are full of amazing art and history. It's too bad many of the locals don't see it.

  5. AntiMusick
    January 27, 2010

    you are regurgitating what other before have been saying about the Fulton mall, but it is good to keep pounding out the repetition word of mouth so more people will know. thank you.

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