Mall Maker: Victor Gruen, Architect of an American Dream

by M. Jeffrey Hardwick, Victor Gruen

The shopping mall is both the most visible and the most contentious symbol of American prosperity. Despite their convenience, malls are routinely criticized for representing much that is wrong in America—sprawl, conspicuous consumption, the loss of regional character, and the decline of Mom and Pop stores. So ubiquitous are malls that most people would be suprised to learn that they are the brainchild of a single person, architect Victor Gruen. An immigrant from Austria who fled the Nazis in 1938, Gruen based his idea for the mall on an idealized the dream of concentrated shops that would benefit the businessperson as well as the consumer and that would foster a sense of shared community. Modernist Philip Johnson applauded Gruen for creating a true civic art and architecture that enriched Americans' daily lives, and for decades he received praise from luminaries such as Lewis Mumford, Winthrop Rockefeller, and Lady Bird Johnson. Yet, in the end, Gruen returned to Europe, thoroughly disillusioned with his American dream. In Mall Maker , the first biography of this visionary spirit, M. Jeffrey Hardwick relates Gruen's successes and failures—his work at the 1939 World's Fair, his makeover of New York's Fifth Avenue boutiques, his rejected plans for reworking entire communities, such as Fort Worth, Texas, and his crowning achievement, the enclosed shopping mall. Throughout Hardwick illuminates the dramatic shifts in American culture during the mid-twentieth century, notably the rise of suburbia and automobiles, the death of downtown, and the effect these changes had on American life. Gruen championed the redesign of suburbs and cities through giant shopping malls, earnestly believing that he was promoting an American ideal, the ability to build a community. Yet, as malls began covering the landscape and downtowns became more depressed, Gruen became painfully aware that his dream of overcoming social problems through architecture and commerce was slipping away. By the tumultuous year of 1968, it had disappeared. Victor Gruen made America depend upon its shopping malls. While they did not provide an invigorated sense of community as he had hoped, they are enduring monuments to the lure of consumer culture.

Genres: Architecture, Nonfiction, History, Biography, Cities, Urbanism, Urban Planning

288 pages, Hardcover

First published September 30, 2003

Reviews

[Max Urai]

Hardwick is a very good researcher, but he is not a writer at all. This is barely even a biography; there are some attempts at the beginning and end to editorialize about Gruen and his design philosophy, and the last chapter even seems to paint the man as a hypocrite who was just shy of a grifter. The latter half of Gruens life was mostly him going preaching about how all the things he built up to then were bad and shallow, and if only people gave him more executive power he could FINALLY do what he really wanted. So that's not a bad interpretation, I don't think. But then again: Hardwick really only hints at this. There's no strong throughline, we get barely anything about his personal life, and after reading the whole thing, I still don't feel like I know or understand Gruen as a person. It's a good book for the times of Victor Gruen; for the life, look elsewhere.

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mr. Hardwick's take on Victor Gruen took me a bit longer to get through than I expected. While the content was there, I found the writing lacking at times. In all honesty, the first part of the book is the hardest. Hardwick writes in circles at times and I felt as though he wanted the book to be a bit more about the man than the architecture than he was able to achieve. I got glimpses of Gruen the person, but what kept me reading was the projects he worked on. I don't know if this is simply because he couldn't get enough information about Gruen the person to adequately weave a story of who he really was outside of his practice, or if he left it out at the end of the day. Focusing more on one part, or taking the time to flesh the time to flesh out both parts of the man would have resulted in a more compelling narrative.

Regardless, this is an important time in architecture and planning that is particularly important to analyze at our current juncture as we continue to wrestle with the effects of post-WWII development. For this reason, the book is a worthwhile read for urbanists, planners, preservationists, architects/architecture students/architectural historians, etc., or those with an interest in these fields.

[Adora]

Little known is Victor Gruen, the man who invented and popularized shopping malls across America. Starting with designing tiny storefronts, Gruen eventually rose to become one of the most popular architects of his time and was frequently commissioned by cities to plan downtown urban renewal projects.

But it’s hard to know what Gruen really believed. He hated the car, yet always insisted on building massive parking garages. He hated suburban sprawl yet basically instigated it. So and so forth.

If you’re really into the history of shopping and retail, this a decent book to consider - albeit sequencing of some passages is a bit sloppy and so hard to follow in some places. Gruen was truly a fascinating character.

[RJ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kind of fascinating- the architect who began the movement of Hudson's to the Detroit suburbs with Northland, turned Kalamazoo's downtown into a pedestrian mall.

Gruen was filled with conflicting theories- hated the automobile, yet his redesigns for downtowns included parking for thousands of cars and made no allowances for mass transit; bemoaned the death of America's center cities while still designing massive suburban shopping centers; railed against the tackiness of suburban shopping strips, yet he was one of the pioneers in designing their progenitors; blasted the state of American cities while transferring the concept of the American mall to the outskirts of his beloved European cities.

He seemed to be more interested in rewriting his legacy than in the consequences of his actions.

[Thacher · Rating 3 out of 5]

An important first crack at the understanding the man who started it all (not that I could ever be so daft to think that any one person could invent something as tricky and omnipresent as the mall).

[Lily · Rating 3 out of 5]

I couldn't quite finish this book because the font made me a sea sick. Despite the vertigo, though, it was an engaging (if slightly overblown) biography.

[Jim]

Excellent book. I will never look at a mall or the mall rats the same again..if I ever even go to a mall again in my life.