America’s Abandoned Shopping Malls

Deserted temples for consumerism dot the landscape, silent sentinels of failed enterprises.

The Century III Mall was once the third biggest shopping center in the world.

America’s First Mall

Edina is a suburb of Minneapolis-Saint Paul. In February, the weather can be a touch chilly and it’s only the hardiest of souls who brave the streets in search of pillow cases or radios.

So, in 1952, the Dayton Company commissioned Austrian-born architect Victor Gruen to design an indoor shopping center to grace the outskirts of Minnesota’s twin cities.

In 1956, the Southdale Center opened and became the template for most subsequent indoor retail spaces.

Writing for Slate, Roman Mars explains that Gruen imagined “an indoor plaza that could be an island of connection in the middle of the sprawl, one that would get people out of their cars in order to walk and stroll within them. He saw his structure as an architectural panacea — it would remedy environmental, commercial, and sociological problems with the creation of a single building.”

Architectural Digest magazine could hardly contain its breathless enthusiasm: “Flow up and down is so easy and uninhibited, and so much gaiety is added by that second layer of moving people, lights and colour, that timidity about two-level…