He got into a Wayne mall before it was razed. Now he's selling his photos for thousands.

Philip DeVencentis | NorthJersey

Show Caption Hide Caption Drone video of Wayne Hills Mall demolition Drone video of Wayne Hills Mall demolition

WAYNE — Phillip Buehler is one of the last people ever to have walked the well-trodden insides of Wayne Hills Mall.

It was early February, he remembered, and the slow atrophy that soon would kill the mall was apparent everywhere. Deep gashes in the roof allowed sleet and snow to fall onto the floor, he said.

The sound of dripping water was the only noise he heard in the lonely mall, as he plodded through at least 3 inches of ice. "But the top half-inch or so had melted," he recalled. "So it almost was like lakes popping up in between the rubble."

He was set up with two cameras, and a few hours later, he left with hundreds of photos of what had once been a mecca of commerce and entertainment for countless patrons. Not long afterward — a matter of days, maybe a week — a wrecking crew wrestled the concrete beast to the ground. But he got there in time to capture the final flashes of the mall's history.

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"It really had that post-apocalyptic look," said Buehler, an award-winning photographer, who has made a living taking pictures of abandoned landmarks. "It was kind of a déjà vu feeling, like I've been here before."

Buehler, 63, who has documented "modern ruins" for 46 years, has snapped images of an airplane graveyard; Ellis Island; Hahn Air Base in Germany; the site of the 1964 New York World's Fair; and, among other notable sights, the S.S. United States, a retired ocean liner.

But this was his first mall.

"Mallrat to Snapchat: The End of the Third Place," a solo exhibition of 21 photographs of the mall's latter moments, will open at Front Room Gallery, a contemporary art hall on Hester Street in lower Manhattan, on Friday. Refreshments, including cheese, crackers and wine, will be served at an opening reception from 7 to 9 p.m. The images will be on display through Jan. 12.

That photos of a dead mall are being unveiled on Black Friday, traditionally the busiest shopping day of the year, is not a coincidence.

Buehler, a native of New Milford who lives in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn with his wife, Lisa Levy, said his exhibit is a critique of humankind's reliance on the internet, as well as its forsaking of face-to-face contact.

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"It killed downtowns — it killed Main Street, U.S.A.," Buehler said, referring to the rise of shopping malls. "Now they're getting killed by social media."

The photos will be sold for as much as $6,000 apiece, with proceeds to be split between Buehler and the gallery.

'The place to be'

The most expensive piece in the collection is a 4-foot-by-5-foot framed shot of the mall's atrium. It shows two rows of high windows, with artificial plants still drooping from their sills. Natural light shines on the floor, which is littered with debris, including fallen ceiling tiles.

Other photos show dilapidated entrances to the stores, such as The Town Mouse and Waldenbooks, that once drew patrons to the mall.

Mayor Christopher Vergano, a township native and 1977 graduate of Wayne Hills High School, said he remembers going to the mall to buy eight-track tapes at Sam Goody.

"That mall was the place to be," said the mayor, who sold leisure suits as a teenager at Meyer Brothers, a department store that anchored the shopping center until 1995.

Vergano was not fully aware of Buehler's upcoming exhibit in Manhattan, but when he was told about it, he said the photographer's work shows "what's going on throughout the country."

A report published on Friday by The Washington Post said mall vacancies are at an eight-year high. Citing a 2017 study, the report said a quarter of malls in the U.S. are expected to close within the next three years. Only the ones "spending millions to reinvent themselves" are surviving, it said.

Willowbrook Mall, for example, has opened multiple restaurants in spaces once occupied by retail tenants, as well as a 12-screen luxury movie theater just last week.

Yet the opening of Wayne Hills Mall, at the intersection of Berdan Avenue and Hamburg Turnpike, was met with much fanfare in 1973. A newspaper supplement that promoted the occasion christened the shopping destination as "New Jersey's most beautiful enclosed mall."

A ShopRite supermarket, at 74,554 square feet, will be built on the footprint of the mall, which shut down in phases but finally closed for good in 2014.

"In order to stay competitive," the mayor said, "malls have to change, and this one didn't."

Andrew Steiger, manager of Levco Associates, which owns the 39-acre site on which the 103,800-square-foot mall stood, did not return a call to discuss Buehler's exhibit.

'Devoid of warmth'

Rusty Tagliareni, an urban archaeologist in his own right, recommended to Buehler that he take photos inside the mall. In mid-December, Tagliareni and his longtime girlfriend, Christina Mathews, went there to take photos for their website, called Antiquity Echoes.

His experience at the mall was similar to Buehler's.

"It was so dark, devoid of any type of not just life, but warmth," Tagliareni said. "It was raining just as hard inside of the building as it was outside. It was so sad — pretty much as depressing as you could picture something."

Neither Buehler nor Tagliareni reported having encountered any obstacles in accessing the mall.

Tagliareni and Mathews, who live together in Milford, Pennsylvania, have co-authored three books, including a 128-page paperback of photos of Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital, an asylum in Morris Plains that was abandoned in 2008.

Tagliareni said he met Buehler at a release party for the latter's 2013 book, "Woody Guthrie's Wardy Forty," which chronicles the singer-songwriter's stay at Greystone.

"Every so often," Tagliareni said, "there's a wave of certain types of places that become disused. We had asylums, and they're slowly being torn down and redeveloped into other things. I guess, now, we're at the mass extinction of shopping malls, and Phil's wise to open his exhibit on Black Friday."

Kathleen Vance, an artist and co-director of the gallery, said Buehler's exhibit "speaks to a whole generation of people" who spent a lot of time in malls.

"It's very impactful to see this kind of decay," said Vance, an environmental sculptor.

Buehler's exhibit will feature an interactive aspect. Visitors can listen to top tracks of 1973, when the mall debuted. Dozens of vinyl records that were released that year, and a record player, are part of the display.

For Buehler, taking pictures of abandoned places is about "trying to rescue" something. And in this case, he said, it is "that mall culture" he pines for.

"The first thing you wanted to do when you got your driver's license was to get out of your house, and to go where your friends were," he said. "The mall was one of those places."

Philip DeVencentis is a local reporter for NorthJersey.com. For unlimited access to the most important news from your local community, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.

Email: devencentis@northjersey.com Twitter: @PhilDeVencentis

If you go

WHAT: "Mallrat to Snapchat: The End of the Third Place," a solo exhibition of photographs by Phillip Buehler.

WHEN: Friday, Nov. 29, through Sunday, Jan. 12.

WHERE: Front Room Gallery, 48 Hester St. in New York City.

HOW MUCH: No charge to attend.

CONTACT: For more details, visit the gallery's website.