Shopping center  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

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A shopping mall, shopping centre, shopping arcade, shopping precinct or simply mall is one or more buildings forming a complex of shops representing merchandisers, with interconnecting walkways enabling visitors to easily walk from unit to unit, along with a parking area — a modern, indoor version of the traditional marketplace.

Modern "car-friendly" strip malls developed from the 1920s, and shopping malls corresponded with the rise of suburban living in many parts of the Western World, especially the United States, after World War II. From early on, the design tended to be inward-facing, with malls following theories of how customers could best be enticed in a controlled environment. Similar, the concept of a mall having one or more "anchor" or "big box" stores was pioneered early, with individual stores or smaller-scale chain stores intended to benefit from the shoppers attracted by the big stores.

History

Numerous covered shopping arcades, such as the 19th-century Al-Hamidiyah Souq in Damascus, Syria, can be considered precursors to the present-day shopping mall. Isfahan's Grand Bazaar, which is largely covered, dates from the 10th century. The 10 kilometer long covered Tehran's Grand Bazaar also has a long history. The Grand Bazaar of Istanbul was built in the 15th century and is still one of the largest covered markets in the world, with more than 58 streets and 4,000 shops.

Gostiny Dvor in St. Petersburg, which opened in 1785, may be regarded as one of the first purposely-built mall-type shopping complexes, as it consisted of more than 100 shops covering an area of over Template:Convert.

The Oxford Covered Market in Oxford, England opened in 1774 and still runs today.

The Burlington Arcade in London was opened in 1819. The Arcade in Providence, Rhode Island introduced the retail arcade concept to the United States in 1828. This was a forerunner of today's shopping mall The Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan, Italy followed in the 1870s and is closer to large modern malls in spaciousness. Other large cities created arcades and shopping centres in the late 19th century and early 20th century, including the Cleveland Arcade, Dayton Arcade and Moscow's GUM, which opened in 1890. Early shopping centers designed for the automobile include Market Square, Lake Forest, Illinois (1916) and Country Club Plaza, Kansas City, Missouri (1924).

An early indoor mall prototype in the United States was the Lake View Store at Morgan Park, Duluth, Minnesota, which was built in 1915 and held its grand opening on July 20, 1916. The architect was Dean and Dean from Chicago and the building contractor was George H. Lounsberry from Duluth. The building is two stories with a full basement, and shops were originally located on all three levels. All of the stores were located within the interior of the mall; some shops were accessible from inside and out.

In the mid-20th century, with the rise of the suburb and automobile culture in the United States, a new style of shopping centre was created away from downtown.

Early examples

The Cleveland Arcade was among the first indoor shopping arcades in the US and an architectural triumph. When the building opened in 1890, two sides of the arcade had 1,600 panes of glass set in iron framing and is a prime example of Victorian architecture.

The early shopping center in the United States took shape at the Grandview Avenue Shopping Center (the "Bank Block") in Grandview Heights, Ohio in 1928, the first regional shopping center in America that integrated parking into the design. This general plan by Don Monroe Casto Sr. became the prototype of shopping centers for several decades. Other important shopping centers built in the 1920s and early 1930s include Country Club Plaza in Kansas City, Missouri, the Highland Park Village in Dallas, Texas; River Oaks in Houston, Texas; and Park and Shop in Washington, D.C..

The suburban shopping center concept evolved further in the United States after World War II. Bellevue Shopping Square (now known as Bellevue Square) opened in 1946 in Bellevue, Washington, a suburb of Seattle. Then came the Broadway-Crenshaw Center (known today as Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza), which was dedicated, in Los Angeles, in 1947. Two more suburban shopping centers were completed in 1949. Town and Country Drive-In Shopping Center (Town and Country Shopping Center), in Whitehall, Ohio was a strip-type complex erected in the environs of Columbus, Ohio. Park Forest, Illinois' Park Forest Plaza (Park Forest Downtown) was built along the lines of a cluster-type complex. It was situated in the southern suburbs of Chicago, Illinois.

The suburban shopping mall, as Americans came to know it, came into being with the opening of Seattle's Northgate Center (presently known as Northgate Mall) in April 1950. This was followed by Lakewood Center (1951), in Lakewood, California, Shoppers' World (1951), in Framingham, Massachusetts, Stonestown Center (now Stonestown Galleria) (1952) in San Francisco, California and Northland Center (1954), in Southfield, Michigan. Open-air-type malls were also built in Canada and Australia. Don Mills Convenience Centre (now Shops at Don Mills) opened in 1955, in Toronto, Ontario. Chermside Drive-In Shopping Centre, started trading to the public in 1957, in Brisbane, Australia.

The fully enclosed shopping mall did not appear until the mid-1950s. The idea of a regional-sized, fully enclosed shopping complex was pioneered in 1956 by the Austrian-born architect and American immigrant Victor Gruen. This new generation of regional-sized shopping centers began with the Gruen-designed Southdale Center, which opened in the Twin Cities suburb of Edina, Minnesota, USA in October 1956. For pioneering the soon-to-be enormously popular mall concept in this form, Gruen has been called the "most influential architect of the twentieth century" by Malcolm Gladwell.

The first retail complex to be promoted as a "mall" was Paramus, New Jersey's Bergen Mall. The center, which opened with an open-air-format in 1957, was enclosed in 1973. Aside from Southdale Center, significant early enclosed shopping malls were Harundale Mall (1958), in Glen Burnie, Maryland, Big Town Mall (1959), in Mesquite, Texas, Chris-Town Mall (1961), in Phoenix, Arizona, and Randhurst Center (1962), in Mount Prospect, Illinois.

The first fully enclosed shopping mall in Canada was Wellington Square. It was designed for Eaton's by John Graham Jr. as an enclosed mall with a department store anchor and subterranean parking. It opened in downtown London, Ontario, on August 11, 1960. After several renovations, it remains open today as Citi Plaza.

Other early malls moved retailing away from the dense, commercial downtowns into the largely residential suburbs. This formula (enclosed space with stores attached, away from downtown, and accessible only by automobile) became a popular way to build retail across the world. Gruen himself came to abhor this effect of his new design; he decried the creation of enormous "land wasting seas of parking" and the spread of suburban sprawl.

In the UK, Chrisp Street Market was the first pedestrian shopping area built with a road at the shop fronts. The first mall-type shopping precinct in Great Britain was built in the downtown area of Birmingham. Known as Bull Ring Centre (now Bull Ring Birmingham), it was officially dedicated in May 1964. This was followed by Brent Cross Centre, Britain's first out-of-town shopping mall, which was dedicated, on the northern outskirts of London, in March 1976.

In the United States, developers such as A. Alfred Taubman of Taubman Centers extended the concept further, with terrazzo tiles at the Mall at Short Hills in New Jersey, indoor fountains, and two levels allowing a shopper to make a circuit of all the stores. Taubman believed carpeting increased friction, slowing down customers, so it was removed. Fading daylight through glass panels was supplemented by gradually increased electric lighting, making it seem like the afternoon was lasting longer, which encouraged shoppers to linger.

Ala Moana Center in Honolulu, Hawaii is currently the largest open-air mall in the world and was one of the largest malls in the United States when it opened for business in August 1959. It is currently the sixteenth largest in the country. The Outlets at Bergen Town Center, the oldest enclosed mall in New Jersey, opened in Paramus on November 14, 1957, with Dave Garroway, host of The Today Show, serving as master of ceremonies. The mall, located just outside New York City, was planned in 1955 by Allied Stores to have 100 stores and 8,600 parking spaces in a Template:Convert mall that would include a Template:Convert Stern's store and two other Template:Convert department stores as part of the design. Allied's chairman B. Earl Puckett confidently announced The Outlets at Bergen Town Center as the largest of ten proposed centers, stating that there were 25 cities that could support such centers and that no more than 50 malls of this type would ever be built nationwide.

See also

• Bazaar
• Night market
• Online shopping malls
• James Rouse, community planner

Types of shopping facilities

• Big-box store
• High street
• Lifestyle center (retail)
• Main street
• Market
• Outlet mall
• Plaza
• Power center (retail)
• Shōtengai
• Strip mall
• Town square

Planning concepts

• Gruen transfer
• Public space

Lists of malls

• List of largest shopping malls in the world
• List of shopping malls by country