Please click on "original" below to see this image in the largest version. Thank you to Gary F. Brown (HHS 65) for contributing this old Miami Herald clipping that he recently found. Gary and I were students in 8th or 9th grade at Palm Springs Junior High when this photo was taken. Interesting points to note are:

1. The Wometco Palm Springs Theatre was not built yet next to Jackson/Byron's but it looks like they are preparing the land underneath for its construction. The theatre opened in December 1962. The shopping center opened on March 30, 1960 so it is only about a year old in this photo.

2. It looks like a temporary go-kart track is in operation in the shopping center's parking lot close to W. 49th Street.

3. That vacant lot in the northeast corner of W. 49th Street and W. 4th Avenue is still vacant. There was a beautiful old tall tree that grew up in the northeast corner of the lot and someone chopped it down a few years ago just for the hell of it to make it a barren lot again. : (

4. I suppose they didn't have any landscaping requirements back then because now you just can't build shopping centers and huge asphalt parking lots like the old days without spending a fortune on landscaping to make it easier on the eyes and to allow water drainage into the ground. I sometimes think that the Pembroke Lakes Mall has more oak trees in their parking lots than all of Hialeah when I go there.