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As described by Hutter (1987), the downtown department store was the first true modern commercial phenomenon. From the 1880s to the 1920s it provided something new--a convenient one-stop, one-price shopping establishment. Trachtenberg (1982) points out that "in department stores, buyers of goods learned new roles for themselves, apprehended themselves as 'consumers,' something different from mere users of goods." (Alan Trachtenberg 1982. The Incorporation of America. New York: Hill and Wang. p. 130.)
Part of the success of the large department store was the technology developing during the Industrial Revolution including such new inventions as the elevator, improvements in gas lighting, and pneumatic tube systems. But there was also a social element to the phenomenon, for shopping in these "grand emporiums" represented a new ethic of consumerism that was being glorified during this period and represented the success of the American economic system. They also were important in teaching women to be proper users of goods.
As much as the school, and much like the factory, the department store served its customers as an educational institution. Proferring infinite charm at cheap prices, it sold along with its goods a lesson in modern living. The departments taught the social location of goods; trousers as "men's clothing," silks as "women's wear," reclining chairs as "parlor furniture."...department stores taught families what they needed, taught symbolic as well as practical functions of things. The lessons inhered in the design of things themselves, their packaging and advertisement, their place and manner of presentation, the entire gestalt assuming a continuous act of learning and using, along with buying. (Tractenberg. p. 132.)
The department store also provided post-Victorian women a safe place to go in the industrial city. Many provided more than basic shopping facilities, including ladies' lunchrooms, sitting rooms, and even "silence rooms" for a peaceful respite. Detroit's Hudson's store had a room where mothers could nurse their babies and change their diapers. Ultimately this emphasis led to the "feminization of spending." (Duncan 1965) Technology also had much to do with the new form of convenience shopping, for the automobile no longer made centrality necessary to retail success, and shopping followed the development of residential areas of the urban fringe.
In the last sixty years there has been a gradual, but inexorable, shift of retail from the city center to new suburban centers. At first retail followed new residential development, but then residential followed retail as the convenience of new commercial centers became better established.
This shift has been a relatively tranquil process, and has been widely accepted. Little friction to it has been created either through public policy or private competition. Indeed, it has generally been the strategy of formerly downtown businesses to join the surge to the suburbs rather than fight it. Thus, the functions that remain in the downtowns were either too weak or too established in a special niche to move.
Wide streets, squares, and plazas are needed in these days of parking....Main traffic ways should have great width, but byways should be side enough only to give capacity to go from one traffic way to another....The shops are built around a square of plaza ...and the main streets in commercial areas are 100 to 200 feet in width. (James E. Vance, Jr. 1990. The Continuing City. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 491, from a speech given by J.C. Nichols to his company associates in 1934.)It is clear that Nichols integrated the automobile into the design of this shopping plaza, and began an inevitable trend that has impacted cities all over the world ever since. By including 250 shops, some branches of downtown stores, he also established the suburban shopping center as a direct competitor to the traditional downtown as the center of retail. One of the first and largest supermarkets established was the Crystal Market in San Francisco. Built on a former circus grounds, the store building was 68,000 square feet, with parking for 4,350 cars. "By the mid-1930s the Crystal Palace set a sales record of twenty-five tons of sugar in an hour, five freightcar-loads of eggs in a month, and an average of nearly a ton of apples per day for an entire year. Seizing the potential of one-stop shopping, the Crystal Palace quickly expanded to offer liquor, tobacco, and jewelry as well as drugstores, barber, and beauty parlors, and a dry cleaner--like the hypermarket of today--and sowed the seeds of its own destruction. While consumers could find almost anything they wanted,...they could not get past the logjam at the checkout counter to buy it." (The Future of U.S. Retailing. p. 55.) "Highland Park in Dallas, developed ...in 1931, synthesized new retailing ideas. Many consider this project to be the first planned shopping center... Highland Park occupied a single site not bisected by public streets, its stores were built with a unified image and managed under the control of a single owner, and the amount of onsite parking was determined by demand. It was so well conceived that even today it commands rents of $45 per square foot...
Business and financial innovations may have been more important than design innovations. The River Oaks Center, developed in 1937 in Houston,... inspired a new way of thinking about "the shopping center" and contributed operational practices such as the percentage lease and the merchants' association. Other significant operational innovations surfaced in later years: careful attention to tenant mix, the professionalization of management, joint promotions and participative advertising, common area maintenance, the standardization of leases, the switch to net leases, and the inclusion of escalation clauses in leases.
The model for the regional mall--Northgate Center in Seattle--was developed... in 1950. Northgate pioneered the idea of incorporating a full-line department store as an anchor, and featured a central pedestrian mall and service delivery via an underground tunnel. Fueled by the inception of the interstate freeway system and regional expressways, the development of regional malls took off.
The market then began to refine the shopping center concept. In 1956, the first enclosed mall--Southdale--was developed, and from then on, the growth in shopping centers has been dramatic. Extra-large super regional centers have come into existence... Mixed-use centers, like Houston's Galleria, also represent an important refinement, as do multilevel malls, like Water Tower Place in Chicago, made possible by technological innovations in elevators and escalators." (A. Alexander Bul and Nicholas Ordway. 1987. "Shopping Center Innovations: The Past 50 Years." Urban Land (June 1987). pp. 22-23.)
The evolution of the shopping center has led to its largest example in Edmonton Mall in Alberta, Canada. It has 5.2 million square feet, and contains "over eight hundred stores including eleven major department stores, nineteen movie theatres, 110 eating establishments, five amusement areas." (The Future of U.S. Retailing. p. 57.) It also represents the notion of convenience shopping taken to its furthestmost expression, and represents how far retail businesses have gone from the small independent retailer located in a traditional downtown. Yet it also represents that retailing has taken two paths, one toward the convenience of the regional megamall, with all services collected in one common location, and the other toward the diversity of independent retailers filling a niche in the local market. This niche market is what most downtowns are left with, and with which retailers can capitalize.
However, the shopping center industry has overbuilt in recent years, and is now faced with excess capacity. "In response to the conspicuous consumption of the 1980s, retail floor space in North America grew by 80 percent, supported by only a 10 percent increase in population."
Kansas City: Country Club Plaza