The history of the modern shopping mall can be traced back over 200 years, and includes the Passage du Caire that opened in Paris in 1798 and the Burlington Arcade that opened in London in 1819. In the U.S., after World War II, traditional Main Street shopping transitioned to shopping centers and that later on were also referred to as shopping malls. While open-air plazas like the Bergen Mall in Paramus, New Jersey and the Kalamazoo Mall already existed, the opening of the Southdale Center in Minnesota’s Twin Cities area on October 8, 1956 heralded the beginning of fully enclosed shopping destinations.

One of the major early figures in the creation and development of the modern mall was Victor Gruen who designed Southdale. Gruen’s road to the Southdale project began in 1943 when he and his partner Elsie Krummeck, were asked to submit a proposal to envision a prototype of what a shopping center would ideally look like for "Architecture 194X" that ran in Architectural Forum. Putting his ideas into action was a challenge. However, he was introduced to the Dayton family that opened a chain of stores. They wanted to own a shopping center for their store in Edina, Minnesota and this was Gruen's opportunity.

Gruen’s vision for these public places was for a less car-centric shopping and living environment. They would be a place people could go, park, and once there, could wander, shop, eat, do errands, and socialize without worrying about crossing streets and continually driving store to store. There were open air pedestrian shopping centers including two that Gruen was involved with – Detroit’s Northland Center which opened in 1954 and the Kalamazoo Mall in the city’s downtown core, opened in 1959 – as well as others like New Jersey’s Bergen Mall that opened in 1957. His ultimate vision also included medical and residential facilities. The Southdale Center, by contrast, was a fully enclosed experience where people would not even be bothered by inclement weather. While Southdale was a hit with shoppers, noted architect Frank Lloyd Wright who visited Southdale in 1956, wasn’t impressed. Despite the changing nature of shopping in America, the move to on-line shopping, and the coming and going of tenants at Southdale itself, Southdale is still an active mall.

Victor Gruen’s work at Southdale gave birth to the modern shopping mall and is inextricably tied to the growth of suburban developments across America.