Shopping centers

In the era following World War II, shopping centers emerged as a prime embodiment of key COLD WAR values and suburban lifestyles.

As the standoff between capitalism and COMMUNISM took shape, the ideals of consumption and abundance helped define the United States. As wartime production transformed into the manufacture of mass goods, the variety and availability of consumer products was seen as evidence of national superiority and divine blessing. Both advertisers and politicians similarly portrayed new conveniences like televisions and refrigerators as the fruits of an American good life arising from the combined forces of democracy and prosperity. By and large, this good life was personified in the image of suburban, middle-class families, the primary consumers of the new products flooding the market. Amid the postwar economic boom, middle-class status extended to nearly 60 percent of the nation’s population by the mid-1950s, and the growth was accompanied by an increase in discretionary income. For the first time since the Great Depression, Americans found themselves more inclined to spend than save and defined their household needs more broadly, a trend critically influenced by the growth of ADVERTISING and its central medium of TELEVISION.

As more Americans aspired to the comfortable, commodified lifestyle presented in advertisements and on

Television, shopping centers developed to meet their consumer needs. As public figures like Vice President Richard M. Nixon characterized consumption as the essence of American freedom, shopping centers reflected the primacy of consumerism in cold war culture, as well as trends like suburbanization and the ongoing rise of the automobile. As the suburb supplanted the city as the center of American life, shopping centers were a critical part of postwar planning. Anticipating the needs of middle-class families, the Federal Housing Administration encouraged developers to provide a nearby market and shops when designing their suburban enclaves. Automobiles allowed businesses to decentralize out of the city, as stores no longer needed a connection to mass transportation for consumers to access them. Accordingly, retailers such as Sears Roebuck, which traditionally used mail-order catalogs to reach consumers nationwide, followed their customers to the suburbs and engendered the wave of the future in American consumption.

In 1950 there were merely 100 shopping centers in the United States, a number that rapidly expanded to 5,000 by 1962. With modern shopping centers, postwar planners designed an experience that reflected the values of newness and mobility, embracing the idea that consumption represented something privileged and unique about American life. By renting out space to other retailers, supermarkets were early innovators of the strip mall, which postwar architects like Victor Gruen developed even further with more deliberate designs. While automobiles facilitated the rise of shopping centers, the creation of a pedestrian shopping environment was central to their survival, as economic success depended upon getting consumers to frequent all shops, not just their intended destination. To this end, shopping centers such as Gruen’s Northgate in Seattle featured stores facing each other across an open-air walkway in a design that mimicked a traditional downtownshopping district. Gruen’s watershed design at Northgate was the first in a series of innovations that later included fountains and benches at centers like Northland in Detroit. Aiming to inspire shoppers to linger, Gruen later integrated such features into the first fully enclosed shopping mall in Edina, Minnesota. Opening in 1962, Gruen’s Southdale was also the first to unite two competing department stores in the same retail complex, a move that departed from traditional business strategies. In this way, shopping centers transformed not only how Americans shopped but also how retailers marketed themselves, as merchants now recognized the virtues of uniting with competitors to create a stronger draw on consumers.

The Interstate Highway Act of 1956 further fueled the development of shopping centers, making them more visible and accessible to motorists and allowing for the creation of larger regional complexes. These developments corresponded with the formation of the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC) in 1957, a trade association that helped to address critical design issues such as how much space to allot for parking. With the help of a traffic engineer in the early 1960s, the ICSC determined a standard design formula of 3.5 spaces per 1,000 square feet of retail space. Through the ICSC, developers and tenants found a forum to discuss professional matters in a way that allowed for the continued growth of shopping centers and later evolution to meet the needs of the emerging baby boom market. By 1970, the number of shopping centers in the United States reached 11,000, a figure that attested to their conspicuous presence in the postwar culture and landscape.

Further reading: Nancy E. Cohen, America's Marketplace: The History of Shopping Centers (Lyme, Conn.: Greenwich Publishing Group, 2002); Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (New York: Basic Books, 1999).

—Hillary S. Kativa