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 America: 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.
