Mall History 101

What does croquet have to do with shopping malls? Simply put, the word "mall" is derived from the name of the lawn game that ultimately became known as croquet. An early version of a game of lawn bowling evolved in France sometime during the 14th century and became known as "Paille-Maille" (ball-mallet). The game was picked up by the Scottish in the 16th century and was reportedly brought to London in 1604 by James I (the king formerly known as James IV of Scotland) when his paille-maille equipment came with him in addition to his golf clubs.

Then in the 17th century, Charles II and members of his court played the game in London's St. James Park. The name of the game evolved to the English version "Pall-Mall" and things should start to look a bit familiar. A nearby London street that runs between Buckingham Palace and Trafalgar Square became known as the "Mall" where major public parades and events take place. The term "mall" gradually became a generic name for a public gathering place and has now been applied to any large shopping complex, generally indoors. In the 1830's a French doctor refined the game paille-maille as exercise for his patients and renamed it to croquet, (crooked stick) which then came back to England shortly thereafter.

The first construction in the USA that had all of the earmarks of a contemporary shopping mall was Country Club Plaza. It was built near Kansas City, Missouri in 1922. Perhaps the most important distinction that qualifies this early development as a "shopping mall" is that it was designed and built by a single entity, the J.C. Nichols Company. Certainly large individual stores had been built long before this date such as Bloomingdales and R.H. Macys in New York City but they were individual entities. The open-air public market has been around since recorded human history. But a pre-designed and privately owned environment to serve as a replacement for the public market was a new concept. Generally, centers of commerce had simply evolved through different owners building their stores or setting up their tents wherever people seemed to be congregating. The new shopping mall concept was to pre-determine where people would congregate based upon population expectations, geography, and ultimately the existence of the environment itself. "If you build it, they will come," and Americans have embraced the public market evolution to the shopping mall without regret ... well, most have.

It begs restating that the open-air market has thrived for centuries around the world. It may have been in Milan, Italy that the first fully enclosed shopping center was constructed. This was the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II and was built between 1865 and 1878 by G. Mengoni and was named after the first Italian King. Italy still boasts many popular, if not vital, open air markets so the leap to building an enclosed market in Italy would seem logical. Or, the first may have been built the Passahz in St. Petersburg, Russia, which dates to similar or possibly an earlier date. The shopping mall concept is certainly not unique to the USA and large malls are being constructed all over the world. One such project is the Mall of Arabia in Dubai which is scheduled to open in 2006 with the claim that it will be the largest mall in the world. At the moment, the largest mall in the world probably remains the West Edmonton Mall while the largest mall in America is The Mall of America in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota. Plans to enlarge the Carousel Mall in Syracuse, NY into the DestiNY Mall (so as to rival the Mall of America) have been kicking around for a few years. But the distinction of being the largest shopping mall is of dubious value. At a point in size where any construction meets local needs, there becomes a need to be viable as a tourist attraction, which is quite a different thing from updating the traditional open air market.

Humans have always wanted complete control over the natural elements so it was a "natural" development for markets to be covered and removed from the whims (and the pleasures) of the elements. Obviously the schemes were very successful because the development scale for these projects grew to ever-larger proportions throughout the 1980s with the evolution of the "mega-malls." The West Edmonton Mall in Alberta, Canada opened in 1981 and housed about 800 stores along with lodging, an amusement park, and a small lake. The concept of a completely planned indoor city was taking shape. In the world of architecture, Buckminster Fuller invented the geodesic dome in the early 1950s and is also known to have coined the phrase "spaceship earth." The marriage of the shopping mall and the geodesic dome has never fully taken place but Fuller's promotion of the feasibility to erect a dome over mid-town Manhattan testifies to the natural merger of the shopping-mall-city and a futuristic view of taming the natural environment.