new York
CNN
—
Decades ago, Americans flocked to Main Street to shop. A series of small, mom-and-pop stores sat next to each other along a tree-lined block or two, displaying their wares through large, inviting windows.
Then, in 1956, something happened that changed that shopping experience forever. A new retail format concentrated the hustle and bustle of Main Street commerce and recreated it inside a very large, square building that was – deliberately – devoid of windows.
The birth of the American mall marked the beginning of an era of “windowless” shopping that is still widely present. The strategy was clever and little detail in the planning – from the no-frills shoebox architecture to potted plants – have been carefully thought out. These were savings measures for shopping center operators that also aimed to encourage shopping center visitors to spend freely. The unnaturally bright artificial lighting strove to create a perpetual daytime environment. This way, mall visitors would stay longer than expected and spend more than they would have liked.
Another reason why malls avoid storefronts has something to do with merchandising, Burt Flickinger, a retail expert and managing director at retail consultancy Strategic Resource Group, told CNN.
Fewer windows and more walls, he said, meant more space for retailers to add shelves and rods to store their products and maximize sales per square foot in their stores that would otherwise be lost to because of a dull view of a shopping center parking lot.
But the sneakiest reason why malls limit windows might be to make shoppers lose track of time.
“Buyers can’t see the rainstorm or the snowstorm without windows. Windowless shopping creates a distraction-free shopping environment,” Flickinger said. “When people feel a sense of timelessness and comfort, families spend more because they can focus solely on the stores and the mall experience.”
Shock and awe inside
The first fully enclosed mall — the Southdale Center in Minneapolis — opened in 1956. It became the prototype as air-conditioned indoor malls that could stay open year-round sprung up in suburbs across the country.
The architect of the 1.2 million square foot Southdale Center was Austrian-born Victor Gruen, considered the pioneer of modern shopping center design. He established Gruen Associates, a still-existing architectural, planning and landscaping firm based in Los Angeles.
He wanted to wow shoppers with shock and awe once they entered the building and visited the well-lit boutiques and cafes, even the artwork on display around the mall.
In the center of the mall would be a fountain or skylight, likely the only point of entry for natural light entering the vast space. He added plants and music to create an inviting sensory experience.
The traditional mall structure was either T-shaped or cross-shaped with the four anchor stores on each side, Stephanie Cegielski, vice president of research at the International Council of Shopping Centers, told CNN.
“When you walk around that ‘T,’ everything is in front of you. As a buyer, you’re constantly looking at what’s next and opposed to what’s happening in the outside world,” she said.
Since all the activity was happening, Cegielski said it didn’t make sense that there were windows per se, “unless you’re looking at a department store that has its own separate entrance into the center commercial, which would create this window to the outside. ,” she says.
The exterior appearance was another story. Southdale Mall was functional and dull to look at and this is the model that all traditional enclosed malls continued to follow.
“Malls are really built to have the landscape inside. All the architectural energy we normally see on the exterior of a building in an urban setting is concentrated inside. A shopping center is a sales machine. Alexandra Lange, architecture critic and author of “Meet me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall,” said in an interview with CNN.
The first series of malls, in the mid-to-late 1950s, featured more architecture on the exterior, Lange said. “But the mall owners found that it didn’t increase consumer interest, so let’s not waste money on that,” she said.
As a bonus, “it was much cheaper for mall developers not to install multiple exterior-facing windows because it would make it cheaper to heat and cool the big box space,” Thomas said. McMillan, director of the Center of Retailing Studies at the Mays Business School at Texas A&M University, in an interview with CNN.
Energy costs are typically the second highest operating expense for retailers after labor costs. “The sophistication of energy-efficient double-glazed windows was not ubiquitous when many shopping malls were built in the United States during and after the energy crisis of the 1970s, so air conditioning could seep through the glass” , Flickinger said.
The design of the shopping center inspired a different type of store. Supermarkets are other shopping destinations incorporating a square, windowless location.
“A typical grocery store displays all fresh food on the outside, which tends to be refrigerated. It’s nice to be next to a wall where there’s power,” Lange said. “If you cut windows into the wall, you have less space for refrigerated display cases.”
Today, there are approximately 1,122 enclosed shopping centers in the United States, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers. That’s down from the 1,400 regional malls that existed about 15 years ago, according to Kristin Mueller, president of commercial property management at JLL, a real estate services and investment management firm, in an interview with CNN.
But even with fewer enclosed malls existing today and only a handful of new malls built in the past decade (including the 3 million-square-foot American Dream Mall that opened in East Rutherford , New Jersey in 2019) who still adhere to Gruen’s plan, Buyers, particularly Gen Z and millennials, don’t seem to be turned off by their windowless aesthetic, she said.
On average, 54% of U.S. adult shoppers visited a mall at least once a month in 2023 and spent an average of just over $300 per month last year, according to the latest ICSC data. According to the group, up to 70% of these buyers were GenZ and 66% of them were Millennials.
However, mall retail is changing, Cegielski said.
Families head to malls as much for entertainment as for shopping, with people enjoying restaurants, movies, mini golf, pickleball courts and large indoor entertainment centers that have been renovated to interior of existing shopping centers.
Some of these adaptive uses of traditional shopping centers might create a practical need for windows after all, she said.