60 Fun Facts About Shopping Malls

What kind of retailer traditionally anchors a shopping mall?

Department stores. Their powerful brand names and heavy advertising generate the foot traffic, and the whole point of a mall is to let smaller shops share in it.

The word 'mall' comes from pall-mall, an old alley game that most resembled which modern one?

Croquet. Pall-mall players drove a wooden ball down an alley and through an iron hoop; London's alley became a tree-lined walk called The Mall, and the name later passed to shopping promenades.

A shopping centre that has lost its anchor stores and most of its shoppers is popularly known as what?

A dead mall. When the big stores leave, the foot traffic they drew goes with them, so sales fall at nearly every remaining shop and the rents can no longer pay for the building's upkeep.

What do Americans call a single row of shops with parking directly in front and no indoor walkway?

A strip mall. Shoppers can park at the door of the shop they want, a convenience that had visits to strip malls rising in the early 2020s even as many enclosed malls struggled to keep their customers.

Which city's covered shopping passages, the oldest survivors dating from the 1790s, were forerunners of the modern mall?

Paris. One of its oldest surviving passages, the Passage du Caire, was named in tribute to Napoleon's campaign in Egypt; shoppers valued such passages as shelter from the weather and the filthy streets.

Which London shopping arcade, opened in 1819, is still patrolled by top-hatted guards called Beadles?

Burlington Arcade. Its Beadles still enforce a ban on whistling, once a signal between pickpockets, though Sir Paul McCartney is officially excused.

Which Italian city's glass-roofed Galleria, beside its Duomo, gave the word 'galleria' to shopping malls worldwide?

Milan. Visitors to the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II spin three times on one heel on a floor mosaic of a bull for luck, wearing a hole that the city has had to repair more than once.

Often called America's oldest indoor mall, a Greek Revival arcade built in 1828 stands in which New England state capital?

Providence. After years of decline, the Arcade reopened in 2013 with small shops on the ground floor and 48 micro-loft apartments on the two floors above.

Which Missouri city's Country Club Plaza, built in the 1920s, is considered the first suburban shopping centre planned for drivers?

Kansas City. Sceptics dubbed the scheme Nichols' Folly, but developer Jesse Clyde Nichols built it to resemble Seville, with imported fountains and mosaics, and the shoppers came.

A 1955 mall named simply 'Shopping', often called the world's first indoor one, stands near the Arctic Circle in which country?

Sweden. Its British-born architect designed the mall in Luleå so that city life could move indoors through the long northern winter.

Which American visionary studied mall designer Victor Gruen's ideas when planning his own model city of the future?

Walt Disney. Repelled by the motels and billboards that sprang up around Disneyland, he read Gruen while planning EPCOT as a real city with residents; after his death it was built as a theme park instead.

Southdale Center, widely credited as America's first enclosed, climate-controlled mall, opened in 1956 in a suburb of which city?

Minneapolis. In suburban Edina, Victor Gruen roofed over a 'garden court of perpetual spring' with a fishpond and a tall cage of songbirds, so that shopping no longer depended on Minnesota's weather.

Which architect said in 1956 that Southdale's garden court had 'all the evils of the village street and none of its charm'?

Frank Lloyd Wright. He toured the new mall and was just as scathing about other new buildings nearby, but developers ignored him and copied Southdale across America.

Victor Gruen, who invented the American mall, fled which city when the Nazis took it over in 1938?

Vienna. He reached New York speaking no English, was designing Fifth Avenue boutiques within a year, and meant his malls to bring the urban life of his home city to America's suburbs.

Victor Gruen designed the first outdoor pedestrian mall in the United States, opened in 1959 in which Michigan city?

Kalamazoo. Many American downtowns copied its car-free Burdick Street, but most of those pedestrian malls later vanished, and Kalamazoo itself reopened half of its mall to traffic.

How did Victor Gruen come to regard the suburban malls that copied his design?

As a betrayal of his ideas. He had planned malls as town centres ringed by homes, schools and parks, and in 1978 he refused, in his words, to 'pay alimony' for such 'bastard developments'.

The 'Gruen transfer' is the moment a mall's design turns a shopper with a list into what?

An impulse buyer. Fountains, music and tempting displays are arranged so that someone who came in for socks leaves with a new shirt too, an effect named after the mall pioneer Victor Gruen.

Which state's Bergen County, home of the 1957 Bergen Mall, has one of America's last bans on Sunday shopping?

New Jersey. Its counties were allowed to drop the old blue laws from the 1950s, but Bergen, a mecca for malls, voted to keep its ban, so giants like Garden State Plaza go dark every Sunday.

Mall developer Alfred Taubman called which feature a shopper's only direct contact with the building?

The floor. He laid small stone tiles so that thin-soled shoes would grip, and scorned the carpet some rivals used, saying it creates friction.

Which Chinese-American fast-food chain began in 1983 as a single counter in California's Glendale Galleria mall?

Panda Express. The mall's owners, regulars at Andrew Cherng's Panda Inn restaurant, asked him for a quick-service version, and its chef later invented orange chicken at a Hawaii branch.

Which mall fixture did developer James Rouse pioneer in the 1970s, after his first attempt in Pennsylvania flopped?

The food court. His 1971 version at Plymouth Meeting Mall was judged too small and too samey, but the one that opened at Paramus Park in 1974 is credited as America's first success; Rouse pictured them as community picnics.

Which Chicago skyscraper on the Magnificent Mile became the city's first 'vertical mall', with eight floors of shops at its base?

Water Tower Place. Shoppers rode its glass elevators through eight floors, but after its last anchor closed in 2021 the owner decided to cut the mall back to the bottom three.

In which 1985 film does a shopping mall's name change from Twin Pines to Lone Pine partway through?

Back to the Future. Marty knocks down one of the two pines on a ranch when he arrives in 1955, so the mall later built there has a different name when he gets home; it was filmed at California's Puente Hills Mall.

What made 2007 a landmark year in the decline of the American shopping mall?

No new indoor mall opened, the first such year in half a century, down from about 140 a year in the mid-1990s. Developers had built far more malls than shoppers could fill.

Which Netflix series rebuilt part of a dying Georgia mall as the 1985 Starcourt Mall for its third season?

Stranger Things. Gwinnett Place Mall near Atlanta, once the leading mall in its region, was on life support with gaping empty units when the crew restored a wing to its 1980s look in 2018.

Which 1980 comedy staged a police car chase through the real, recently closed Dixie Square Mall near Chicago?

The Blues Brothers. The chase did real damage to the building, which had failed after little more than a decade as a mall, and it was left to decay for some thirty years before it was demolished in 2012.

Which company opened a warehouse in 2018 on the site of Ohio's Randall Park Mall, once billed as the world's largest?

Amazon. The mall opened in 1976 calling itself the world's largest shopping centre and closed in 2009; the online retailer that helped empty such malls now ships parcels from the same ground.

The Supreme Court's 1980 Pruneyard Shopping Center ruling concerned what issue inside a California mall?

Free speech. High-school students collecting signatures for a petition had been told to leave, and the Court let California protect such campaigning even inside a privately owned mall.

A plaque in Mall of America's theme park marks which spot on the Twins' old baseball diamond?

Home plate. The mall replaced Metropolitan Stadium, where the Twins and Vikings played until 1981, and a red seat mounted high on a wall marks where Harmon Killebrew's longest home run landed.

Mall of America is in which Minnesota suburb?

Bloomington. When the Twins and Vikings left its stadium for a new dome downtown, the suburb was left with a huge empty site beside the airport, and filled it with the mall.

Which mega-mall near New York was opened in 2019 by the owners of West Edmonton Mall?

American Dream. Begun as Xanadu, it stood unfinished for years as its costs soared, and when it finally opened more than half its space went to rides, rinks and restaurants, not shops.

Before Nickelodeon took over, the theme park inside Mall of America was themed around which cartoon characters?

The Peanuts gang. The park opened in 1992 as Knott's Camp Snoopy, but licence talks collapsed in 2006 and Snoopy was stripped out, leaving it plain 'The Park at MOA' until Nickelodeon moved in two years later.

Besides its skylights and lighting, what helps keep Mall of America warm through Minnesota winters?

Shoppers' body heat. The mall has no central heating: tens of millions of visitors a year, the lights and the sun through the skylights warm its halls, though individual stores have heating systems of their own.

Which Arnold Schwarzenegger comedy shot scenes inside Mall of America?

Jingle All the Way. Its toy-store fight between two desperate dads was filmed in a real shop at the mall, where Schwarzenegger was also a co-owner of the Planet Hollywood restaurant.

West Edmonton Mall was the world's largest until 2004, when a bigger mall opened in which country?

China. A giant mall in Beijing took the title in October 2004 and lost it a year later to the South China Mall in Dongguan, which then stood mostly empty for more than a decade.

West Edmonton Mall's World Waterpark opened in the 1980s with what it billed as the world's largest indoor what?

Wave pool. The same 1985 expansion added an indoor lake with live dolphins and full-size submarines; the last dolphin left in 2004 and the submarines are gone too.

In the 2009 comedy Paul Blart: Mall Cop, what does Kevin James ride on patrol?

A Segway. A mall in the state where the story is set refused permission, so the patrols and chases were shot at a mall in Massachusetts, and Blart ends the film getting married on one.

In a 2019 retail industry study, which Canadian mall was the country's busiest, ahead of West Edmonton Mall?

Toronto Eaton Centre. It sits on top of two subway stations in the heart of downtown, so commuters pour through it alongside shoppers and tourists, giving it more visitors than any of the city's tourist attractions.

Dubai Mall stands next to which landmark?

Burj Khalifa. A single developer, Emaar, built both the tower and the mall at its foot as parts of one brand-new district, Downtown Dubai.

What sprang a leak inside Dubai Mall in February 2010, forcing part of the building to be evacuated?

The shark aquarium. Its owner said water had escaped at a joint in the giant viewing panel and that its hundreds of sharks and rays were never at risk; divers and maintenance crews soon sealed it.

Builders of Tehran's Iran Mall set a Guinness record in March 2018 by doing what non-stop for over five days?

Pouring concrete. Crews kept the pour going for five days and four hours; two years later the vast complex lent its exhibition halls as a 3,000-bed recovery centre for COVID-19 patients.

Which lingerie chain began in 1977 in a Palo Alto mall as a shop where men could buy gifts without embarrassment?

Victoria's Secret. Founder Roy Raymond had felt like an intruder buying lingerie for his wife in an ordinary shop; he sold the business in 1982, just before its new owner spread it through America's malls.

King of Prussia, the largest mall in Pennsylvania, is about 20 miles northwest of which city?

Philadelphia. The mall and its town are named after an 18th-century tavern, the King of Prussia Inn, a day's ride from the city, which spent decades stranded between the lanes of a highway before being moved in 2000.

Gateshead's Metrocentre was built on the site of what?

A power station. Its ash dump, a muddy wasteland that locals called a 'great big clarty field', was bought for just 100,000 pounds and went on to hold what was then the biggest shopping centre in Europe.

Westfield Stratford City opened in east London as the main walking route into the park for which event?

The 2012 Olympics. The mall sat between the stations and the Olympic Park, so most spectators were expected to walk through it on their way to the Games, and it opened as Europe's largest urban shopping centre.

Which shopping centre near Manchester was sold in 2011 for about 1.6 billion pounds, then Britain's biggest property deal?

The Trafford Centre. Winning permission to build it had taken one of the longest and costliest planning battles in British history, settled by the House of Lords in 1995, three years before it opened.

Westfield, the brand on giant malls in London's White City and Stratford, was founded in which country?

Australia. Two immigrants, Frank Lowy and John Saunders, started with a shopping centre at Blacktown in Sydney's western suburbs and listed the company in 1960; its name now hangs on malls from London to Los Angeles.

Which 1978 George Romero zombie film was shot in Pennsylvania's Monroeville Mall?

Dawn of the Dead. Romero got the idea when a friend whose firm ran the mall showed him its hidden passages and joked that someone could hide out there in an emergency.

Which sitcom revealed that Robin Scherbatsky was once a Canadian teen pop star with the hit "Let's Go to the Mall"?

How I Met Your Mother. The spoof 1980s video, with shout-outs to Wayne Gretzky and Canada's prime minister, first aired in the 2006 episode 'Slap Bet' and made Robin Sparkles a running joke for years.

Which comic-book legend gives romantic advice as himself in Kevin Smith's 1995 mall comedy Mallrats?

Stan Lee. The film flopped in 1995 and then became a cult favourite, and his cameo grew famous enough that Captain Marvel, 24 years later, shows him learning his Mallrats lines.

What verdict did Newsweek deliver on the indoor mall in 2008?

It declared the format obsolete, writing that the American mall was 'in its dying throes, if not already dead', even as the costliest one ever built in the country was going up outside New York.

Where are a mall's anchor stores normally placed in its layout?

At opposite ends, so that shoppers walking from one big store to the other pass every small shop in between; developer Alfred Taubman put his escalators at the ends too, to make customers walk the full loop.

Which city is noted for vertical malls such as Times Square, Langham Place and Hysan Place?

Hong Kong. Land there is at such a premium that malls climb instead of sprawling, and express escalators lift shoppers several levels at a time to coax them towards the top.

Which Canadian writer said mall designer Victor Gruen 'may well have been the most influential architect of the twentieth century'?

Malcolm Gladwell. In The New Yorker in 2004 he argued that Gruen had designed an archetype, copied so faithfully that almost every American mall is a Southdale facsimile, and that Alfred Taubman then perfected it.

City Creek Center, a 2012 mall that keeps its shops shut on Sundays, was developed by which church?

Mormon. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints rebuilt three blocks by its Salt Lake City headquarters around a re-created creek and a retractable roof, to keep the streets beside Temple Square lively and inviting.

Which toy retailer opened its first shop in 1997 inside the Saint Louis Galleria mall?

Build-A-Bear Workshop. Founder Maxine Clark has said the idea came from a friend's 10-year-old daughter, who suggested making their own when they could not find a Beanie Baby in the shops.

Which Southeast Asian country's biggest mall chain, SM, takes its initials from a shoe shop called ShoeMart?

The Philippines. Henry Sy opened ShoeMart in Manila in 1958 and turned it into dozens of giant malls, which made him the country's richest man for more than a decade.

Which tech company opened its first two shops on the same day in 2001, in malls in Virginia and California?

Apple. Pundits predicted that the stores at Tysons Corner Center and the Glendale Galleria would flop; within three years the chain was selling a billion dollars' worth of goods a year.

Which mall bakery chain began in 1985 as a single counter in SeaTac Mall, near Seattle?

Cinnabon. A Seattle restaurateur had leased the mall space before he had a product, so he hired local baker Jerilyn Brusseau to invent a cinnamon roll in time for the December opening.

Which pop singer went from a 1987 tour of America's shopping malls to two number one singles within months?

Tiffany. Her first single had flopped, so her manager sent her round the country's malls to sing for shoppers, and her cover of 'I Think We're Alone Now' was at number one before the year was out.