The History of Malls

In 1956, the first American shopping mall opened in Edina, Minnesota: the Southdale Centre. Designed by an Austrian-Jewish architect named Victor Gruen who emigrated to the U.S. in 1938, his concept of the mall was intended to capture part of what he’d left behind in Europe — the busy town square. He wanted the mall to be a community space in the era of the American suburb and envisioned malls including not just shops but medical centers, schools, and residences. As suburbs grew, the popularity of malls quickly increased, with over 1,200 being built after the first few prototypes cropped up in the 1950s. Most followed the same plan — two major department stores on either end with many smaller stores in between them. While people flocked to malls and they quickly became part of the American cultural zeitgeist, there were major downsides of the mall’s popularity, including the negative effect on cities and small shops and the proliferation of urban sprawl (for instance, it was generally necessary to have a car to get to a mall). Today, malls in America are in decline due to an oversaturated market and changing consumer trends. Many failed or failing malls are being redesigned or converted to more closely match their multi-purpose European counterparts — and, by extension, Gruen’s original vision for malls in America.