Besides the shopping mall near my house?
I believe its a stretch along Michigan Avenue in downtown Chicago that goes from the river to the north. It has the various high end retailers.
I’m not sure if this is the original use of the term “Miracle Mile,” but it’s certainly one of historical interest. It’s the first race in which two runners broke the 4-minute mile – fifty yeard ago this month.
I’ve wondered the same thing Bookbuster, there is also a Miracle Mile shopping center near the neighborhood I grew up in. I never figured out if the damn place was actually a mile long or not…although I doubt it.
If you live on Long Island (near Port Washington) you live near the Miracle Mile referred to by Billy Joel in “It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me”…“Are you gonna cruise the miracle mile?” A high-end stretch of road with ritzy shops.
I don’t know if that’s the original Miracle Mile, though.
That stretch of Michigan Ave is known as the Magnificent Mile.
The Chicago thing is the Magnificent Mile. And it is, pretty much.
In Los Angeles, the ‘Miracle Mile’ is a stretch of Wilshire Boulevard between La Brea (the ahem ‘world-famous’ La Brea Tar Pits are included in this roughly 1 mile stretch of road) and Fairfax Avenues. It was named this in the late 20’s when 18 empty acres was turned into a business and shopping district by a man named A. W. Ross (source: magazineusa.com). Some of the art deco masterpieces of architecture built at that time are still standing, but the Department Stores and offices that inhabited them have long departed. It is now the site of some large museums including the L. A. County Museum of Art, the Peterson Automotive Museum and others. The area is frequently seen in movies and television shows, and is most extensively featured in the excellent movie Miracle Mile (1988).
I grew up in Port Washington.
The “Miracle Mile” is the stretch of Northern Boulevard (NYS Route 25A) in Manhasset (the town just south of Port Washington) from Searingtown Road to Community Drive. Along that stretch of road are (and have been for over thirty years) a number of department stores, high-end specialty stores and boutiques.
There are lots of different MMs in the USA. It was used as a real estate boosterism term during the post WWII boom, when many towns exploded in size and shiny new commercial areas were built. The hollowing out of downtowns is/was not just something invented by Sam Walton (og rot him) 25 years ago.
Tucson, AZ even has a street by that name, full of then-gleaming early 1960s space-age architecture. Now it’s pretty grubby.
A length of Route 286 in western Pennsylvania lined with shopping plazas is called “Miracle Mile Highway”. I never realized there were others until today.
Coincidentally the town the highway cuts through is “Holiday Park” and each of its streets is named for a vacation spot.
In Australia, it’s the big-time harness race. In case this is one of those regional terms, that’s a horse race where the horses trot rather quickly towing a little buggy.
It’s also a disconcerting movie.
(Set in the La Brea California version of “Miracle Mile”, hence the title)
Nitpick: Although the La Brea tar pits are there, the area is not La Brea, CA; it’s definitely called Los Angeles. I know this for a fact because up until a few months ago, I lived on the Miracle Mile.
But yes, the film is definitely disconcerting. And underrated!
Correct…La Brea is just a major north-south avenue in the area. I don’t think it even abuts the park where the Tar Pits are, but it is only a few blocks away.
I think the ‘Miracle’ name came about because the development was in an area that was conveniently located for several enclaves of high-end consumers, in the time when automobile ownership had just become an expected feature of life. It was a roaring success…a business ‘miracle’.
While there is no “La Brea, California” there is a Brea, California, which is in Orange County.
“The La Brea Tar Pits” translated literally would be “The the tar tar pits”.
Los Angeles has no official boundaries whatsoever of neighborhoods, although “neighborhood councils” have been developed under the most City Charter reform. The Miracle Mile area is part of “The Mid City West” Neighborhood council, although if you told someone in L.A. that you lived in “Mid City West” they would likely have no idea what you meant.
Oh, the tar pits in L.A. are now part of the Page Museum and are just off Wilshire Blvd halfway between Fairfax Avenue and … La Brea Avenue.
There are some smaller cross streets nearby, but La Brea Avenue is indeed named after the tar pits.
The ‘Miracle Mile’ is the long stretch of restaurants, shopping centers, and assorted businesses that form a business district that isn’t downtown but its own little entity. They’re common now, but there was a time when they were new. Teenagers with their parents cars and not a great deal to do (this was before cable) would spend their Friday nights driving up and down the strip, hanging out in the parking lots, and generally making a nuisance of themselves.
I think that Rufus has it about correct.
The earliest newspaper references I could find were from 1937, but referred to the previous decade, indeed in LA.
The snippet said that the Chamber of Commerce said(in 1937) that it referred to
NOt hard to see where some early movie stars and others made their money in 1920’s-30’s California.