In what US city was the first shopping center built?
Thanks!
The Harundale Mall (scroll down to the third photo on the left) in Glen Burnie, Maryland was the first enclosed, air-conditioned mall. It was built in 1958.
Oh, and Google is your friend.
Oh, and Google is your friend.
I suspect there will be many claimants to this. For example, Google also produces this.
The Corruption of the Shopping Mall
by Deb Olin Unferth
Conscious Choice, October 2002
In “Looking backwards” (I can’t remember the exact copyright date, but the late 1800s come to mind) the basic idea of the shopping mall is discussed.
The “Country Club Plaza” of Kansas City claims to be the first shopping center. It was built about 1922.
I Googled and found this site–History of the Shopping Center.
It looks like your answer depends on how you define “shopping center”. Market Square in Lake Forest, IL, built in 1916, was the probably the first business district planned specifically to accomodate automobiles, and is listed by the National Register of Historic Places as the first planned shopping district in the United States. However, in 1922, Country Club Plaza on the outskirts of Kansas City, MO, was the first automobile-centered plaza built according to a unified plan rather than as a random group of stores, owned and operated by a single entity who leased space to tenants. The man who built that, J.C. Nichols, was also the man who popularized the term “shopping center”. And, as was mentioned before, Southdale Center in Edina, MN, was the first climate-controlled, fully-enclosed shopping mall, built in 1956.