The Rise and Fall of the Shopping Mall
There’s a prediction that most malls will close in the near future due to online shopping. I’m personally not convinced, but certainly the shopping mall has passed its prime…at least for now.
When did we come up with the idea of the mall? Why? Does it have a future?
We know when and where the first indoor mall was built, but does it have antecedents? As a concept, it’s probably older than you think.
The Market
Malls are, essentially, permanent markets. And markets are as old as civilization. Markets came before permanent shops. But our modern malls go back to the Medieval European market towns.
Market towns were not villages and they were not cities. They had a specific role and a central square that had a market…maybe once a week in the smaller ones, every day in the larger. Market towns had their own specific status and were located at crossroads or river fords.
Some English market towns even had it in their name – Market Harborough comes to mind. Chipping Sodbury is also indicated as a market town. “Chipping” in this case was from the Saxon word “chip,” to buy. (This verb does not appear to be directly connected to the Old English scoppen, which eventually became “to shop”)
Farmers would bring their produce to the market town on the specified day or days to sell. Other than that, towns had relatively few permanent shops.
Market sites could just be open squares, but were often permanent locations and sometimes structures. I remember my hometown’s market, which had metal frameworks that were turned into stalls on market day.
The Covered Market
The next evolution of the market was the covered market. Covered markets exist today, but have actually existed for a long time. A candidate for the oldest is the Grand Bazaar (Bazaar just means market) in Istanbul, which was started in 1455 as part of a prosperity initiative, and was devoted, initially, to the trading of textiles and jewels.
Covered markets slowly spread. The oldest covered market in Paris is the Marché des Enfants Rouges (the Market of the Red Children), a food market established in 1628. Genoa has the Mercato Orientale (Eastern market), but that one only goes back to the early 1800s.
In America, the oldest covered market is Lancaster Central Market, which started in the 1730s in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
What’s the difference between a covered market and a mall?
It’s actually easy to determine. A covered market has open stalls with no walls around them, while a mall has closed stores.
A Medieval Open Air Mall in Chester
I’m going to go down a side rabbithole for a second here. We’re going to head over to Chester, England. This is a very pretty Medieval town with a unique feature…its four main streets are lined by the famous Rows.
After a devastating fire in 1278, the Rows appear to have been erected as part of rebuilding work. Chester was a major port, but also a city prone to raids, which limited expansion beyond the walls. Said walls were on the footprint of the Roman walls, not leaving much space. (Chester even means “fort”). The theory is that somebody had the bright idea to maximize retail space in a way that was unique at the time…and remained unique for a very long time.
They went up.
The Chester Rows have two layers of store fronts. One is slightly below street level (likely originally at street level. Roads tend to build up). The other is a storey above, where a covered walkway with safety railings gives access to a second row of shops. Above that are multiple stories that would have been used for storage and where the owner of each shop would have had a flat.
Still mostly intact and well cared for, the Rows are worth a visit. All of the ancient storefronts are still occupied…there are pubs, restaurants, and lots of little quirky shops. Every time you look at one of those double layered strip malls, know that somebody was doing this 700 plus years ago.
The First Enclosed Mall
The modern enclosed mall, though, while owing ancestry to all of these things, is an American phenomenon. (Yes, there are covered malls in Europe, but America did it first).
The very first indoor mall is the Southdale Center, which opened in 1956 in a place called Edina, a suburb of Minneapolis. I’ve been there. For the sake of going there. It was designed by a man named Victor Gruen, a socialist who hated cars. His actual idea was that these malls would incorporate services…including libraries and post offices. (Would modern malls be healthier if that idea had taken off?)
The mall was almost built in Detroit, but ended up in Edina because of its anchor store, Dayton’s. The design, though, came from “arcades” in Europe…which themselves came from things like covered markets and the Chester rows.
But the reason it was enclosed was one everyone from Minnesota already knows: Snow. In Minneapolis’ harsh winters, a typical outdoor shopping center would not have seen much traffic during the most lucrative time of the year. So, Gruen roofed it over and put in good climate control.
Over 40,000 people attended the opening ceremony.
Gruen was highly disappointed, though, to find that future malls were thrown up wherever land was cheap and came with huge parking lots. It wasn’t what he had in mind at all!
There are some malls that are not that way, including the one here. Which, incidentally, is flourishing, probably because it’s surrounded by housing and practically on top of a subway station. I think Gruen would like that mall.
Supersizing!
America, of course, has to supersize everything. Enter the Mall of America.
The Mall of America is in another Minneapolis suburb, Bloomington. And it is the largest enclosed mall in the country. It’s not the largest in the world, but it is the largest in the Western Hemisphere and has a total retail floor area of 5,600,000 square foot. In addition to hundreds of stores, it contains:
· A small theme park.
· An aquarium with one of those giant tanks with the tunnel in it.
· A mirror maze.
· A 13 screen movie threater
· An indoor climbing wall
· An adventure course.
· A mini golf course (because of course). Oh wait, multiple mini golf courses
· The Museum of Illusions
· A comedy theater
· Two arcades
· An escape room complex
· Restaurants of all kinds
It’s so much of a tourist attraction it has hotel partnerships. It’s a stop on coach tours. And yes, it is accessible by public transportation…including directly from the airport (I do know people who have spent extended layovers there).
It’s not just a mall, it’s pretty much the mall.
But Wait, There’s Bigger?
So, if the Mall of America is the largest mall in the Western Hemisphere, what’s the largest in the world? Without looking it up, one’s mind has to go to China.
One’s mind is correct. As far as I can find out, the largest shopping mall in the world, with 6,500,000 square feet of retail space, is the New South China Mall in Dongguan, China. However, it has another unfortunate distinction…at one point it was nicknamed the ghost mall of the world.
Apparently, it’s doing better now and has an indoor karting track.
Doing even better is the Golden Resources Mall in Beijing, at 6 million square feet, but that mall is for rich people. It only leases to premium brands.
The Future
I don’t think the prediction that malls are going to die will come true. But I do think that they need to move back to Gruen’s vision.
Down the road from me is the Fashion Centre at Pentagon City. It’s pretty small – only 860,000 sq ft, but its number of store vacancies is what is impressive.
Zero.
Right now there are two unoccupied units, but both are being refurbished for their next tenant. Turnover is a little higher than I would like, but the mall itself is healthy and some stores have been there twenty plus years. This mall used to have a movie theater but, unfortunately, it closed (it was nice to have a theater we could walk to).
Meanwhile, the much larger Landmark Mall died. I went there before it closed and all that was left was Sears, half the food court and, bizarrely, two wig stores. It’s been demolished and is being replaced by a multi use complex including small pavilions, open space, and a skating rink. This shows the trend…indoor malls are out, outdoor multiple use spaces are in.
So, why is this mall doing so well? The answer is simple. There are multiple high rise residential buildings immediately around it. There are customers surrounding it. It’s on top of a Metro stop. This mall bustles.
Because it’s what Gruen wanted. A place to go shop where you don’t have to necessarily drive to get there.
And perhaps the future of malls should also include libraries (alas, a plan to put one in Southdale Center didn’t pan out), post offices…and how about youth community centers?
If the retail apocalypse is real, then perhaps the mall should be what its creator wanted it to be after all.