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Way, way back in roughly 1630, the Italians crafted a game  they called

“Pallamaglio “.   It consisted of a wooden mallet striking a wooden ball with the objective being to follow a circuit of hurdles laid out in an open area.  You might say such a description reminds you of Croquet.  And you would be right.

Eventually, “Pallamaglio” drifted to England where King Charles II was utterly besotted with it.  So much so that he even changed the name to “Pall Mall”.  (And, no, we are not going to talk about cigarettes here.)  Charles decreed that the playing field for “Pall Mall” would be Saint Jame’s Park an empty lot between Buckingham Palace and Trafalgar Square.  Even today in modern England, the Mall remains to this day a ceremonial route.

As with many good things, the love for “Pall Mall” faded.  With its demise the playing fields  took on a new function while retaining the name “mall”.  Vendors selling food and assorted inventories began to fill up the large space.  In time it became a popular place for folks to meet for socializing, shopping and eating.  In every respect it resembled an open pedestrian gathering place much like our current farmers’ markets.

Let us now zoom ahead to the year 1956.   (Is anyone guessing where I’m going with this?)  The place is the USA.  The state is Minnesota. The precise location is Edina.  This is where the commonly accepted first fully enclosed shopping mall in America was constructed.  We still know it as Southdale Centre.  The designer was Viktor Gruen and I’m guessing that he felt compelled to put a roof on the place because of the blustery snow-filled Minnesota winters.   (Good move, Vik!) By all accounts, it was an astounding architectural feat—a climate controlled, suburban, true mixed-use facility that addressed all the needs of the car-centric American people. But here’s a surprise. Did you know that Southdale Mall (Centre) was originally intended to also house a medical center, various schools and a residential component?

But hold on.  Before we Minnesotans get all high and mighty, the honest to goodness truth is that Southdale was not the first American mall.  (And with that an over bloated Minnesota bubble just burst!) You see that credit goes to Highland Park Village, a Mediterranean Spanish-style development constructed in 1931 just north of the bustling young city of Dallas, Texas.

The story began in 1906 when entrepreneur John S. Armstrong purchased 1,326 acres of land that was bisected by an Old Indian trace used as a cattle trail.  There he envisioned an exclusive planned community.  Along with his two sons-in-law, Hugh Prather and Edgar Flippen, they hired the noted architect Wilbur David Cook who had previously designed Beverly Hills.  His plan was for twenty percent of the space to be designated for parks surrounded by high-class, elegant homes.  He called it Highland Park because, after all, it was 130 feet higher than Dallas and had plenty of parks.

Later, when the men decided that Highland Park needed a shopping center that could function as a kind of town square, most of the bankers and businessmen resisted on the premise that business was “expected” to stay downtown.  Ignoring that notion, two prominent architects, Marion Fooshee and James Cheek, were hired to plan a retail center for the new fashionable community.

But what you may not be aware of was that even farther back in history there was yet another contender for the first enclosed shopping mall.  Way back in 1828, customers lined up in Providence, Rhode Island to enter America’s honest to goodness first enclosed shopping center.  It was named  Arcade Providence—also known as Westminster Arcade, and was a fancy dancy version of commercial Greek Revival architecture.  As the years passed, however, business declined and the structure was renovated into residences.  Presently these spaces are now airbnbs, rentals and owner operated homes.

All this now brings us to the present … the present with the big elephant plopped in the room.  Actually, “big” doesn’t quite cover it.  Try behemoth.  We here in Minnesota  adoringly call this Goliath of malls “MOA” or the Mall of America.     Since its doors opened in 1992, this unparalleled place has revolutionized the shopping experience for tens of millions of shoppers a year.  It is one of the top travel destinations in the country and is known throughout the world.

You see, in 1982, the Minnesota Twins and the Vikings relocated from the Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington to the H.H.H. Metrodome in downtown Minneapolis.  This created an empty space; an unprecedented development opportunity of 78 acres of prime real estate.  The Bloomington Port Authority purchased the empty vacated stadium three years later and began to entertain ideas for a shopping mall in its place.  On August 11, 1991, the Mall of America opened for business.  On opening day it contained 330 stores and more than 10,000 employees.  I wonder if any of you were there?

Its popularity now hosts more than 300 events a year, ranging from concerts, to celebrity appearances and fashion shows.  Each year, 32 million people from around the world visit the MOA, generating  nearly $2 billion each year in economic impact for Minnesota. 

Some interesting factoids are:

MOA does not use a central heating system. Rather, a constant 70 degrees is maintained year-round by the passive solar energy from 1.2 miles of skylights plus the warmth  generated from lighting, store fixtures and shoppers’ body heat.

More than 30,000 live plants and 300 live trees act as natural air purifiers within the mall.

The mall recycles more than 60% of its waste – an average of 32,000 tons per year.

It recycles more than 2,400 tons of food waste to a local hog farm where more than 1 million very happy hogs munch annually.

MOA converts the fat from restaurant fryers into more than 4,000 pounds of biodiesel per month – enough fuel for a 53-foot semi-truck to travel from New York to Los Angeles five times.

There are more than 275 water-efficient toilets that save over 1.4 million gallons of water per year.

So, who says that having a great big elephant in the room is such a bad thing?