1950 - Retail, Trade

Retail, Trade

The world's first regional shopping center opens beside a highway on the outskirts of Seattle, where architect John Graham Jr. has designed Northgate—a long, open-air pedestrian thoroughfare lined with a department store and smaller retail establishments that surround a 4,000-car parking lot, with a drive-in bank, a gas station, and a movie theater as well (see Dallas, 1931). By year's end the country has about 100 shopping malls, up from eight in 1946 (see Northland, 1954; architecture [Fort Worth Plan], 1952).