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Victor David Gruen, born Viktor David Grünbaum
retrieved 25 February 2012
(July 18, 1903 – February 14, 1980), was an Austrian-American architect best known as a pioneer in the design of
shopping mall A shopping mall (or simply mall) is a North American term for a large indoor shopping center, usually Anchor tenant, anchored by department stores. The term "mall" originally meant pedestrian zone, a pedestrian promenade with shops along it (that ...
s in the United States. He is also noted for his urban revitalization proposals, described in his writings and applied in master plans such as for Fort Worth, Texas (1955),
Kalamazoo Kalamazoo ( ) is a city in the southwest region of the U.S. state of Michigan. It is the county seat of Kalamazoo County. At the 2010 census, Kalamazoo had a population of 74,262. Kalamazoo is the major city of the Kalamazoo-Portage Metropo ...
, Michigan (1958) and Fresno, California (1965). An advocate of prioritizing pedestrians over cars in urban cores, he was also the designer of the first outdoor pedestrian mall in the
United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...
, the
Kalamazoo Mall The Kalamazoo Mall, the first outdoor pedestrian shopping mall in the United States, is a section of Burdick Street in downtown Kalamazoo, Michigan. Built for $60,000 and opened in 1959, the pedestrian mall became the first of several hundred bu ...
.


Biography


Early life

Victor Gruen was born on July 18, 1903, in a middle-class
Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
family in
Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...
, Austria. He studied architecture at the
Vienna Academy of Fine Arts The Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (german: link=no, Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien) is a public art school in Vienna, Austria. History The Academy of Fine Arts Vienna was founded in 1692 as a private academy modelled on the Accademia di Sa ...
. A committed
socialist Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the ...
, from 1926 until 1934 he ran the "political
cabaret Cabaret is a form of theatrical entertainment featuring music, song, dance, recitation, or drama. The performance venue might be a pub, a casino, a hotel, a restaurant, or a nightclub with a stage for performances. The audience, often dinin ...
at the Naschmarkt"-theatre. At that time he came to know Felix Slavik, the future mayor of Vienna, and they became friends.


Career

As an architect he worked for
Peter Behrens Peter Behrens (14 April 1868 – 27 February 1940) was a leading Germany, German architect, graphic and Industrial design, industrial designer, best known for his early pioneering AEG turbine factory, AEG Turbine Hall in Berlin in 1909. He had a ...
, and in 1933 opened his own architectural firm in Vienna. His firm specialized in remodeling of shops and apartments. When
Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwee ...
annexed Austria in 1938, he emigrated to the United States. Short and stout, he landed "with an architect's degree, eight dollars, and no English." Arriving in New York he changed his name to ''Gruen'' from Grünbaum and started to work as a draftsman. After the success of his design for the Lederer leather-goods boutique on Fifth Avenue, he received further commissions for the design of shops, including Ciro’s on Fifth Avenue, Steckler’s on Broadway, Paris Decorators on the Bronx Concourse, and eleven branches of the clothing chain Grayson’s. In 1941 Gruen moved to Los Angeles. He was naturalized as a US citizen in 1943. In 1951, he founded the architectural firm "Victor Gruen Associates", which was soon to become one of the major planning offices of that time. After the war, he designed the first suburban open-air shopping facility called
Northland Mall Northland Mall was a shopping mall located on the north side of Columbus, Ohio, at the intersection of Morse Road and Karl Road. It opened in 1964 as an open-air shopping center. Northland was the first of the four directionally-named shopping h ...
near Detroit in 1954. After the success of the first project, he designed his best-known work for the owners of Dayton Department stores, the Southdale Mall in Edina, Minnesota, the first enclosed shopping mall in the country. Opening in 1956, Southdale was meant as the kernel of a full-fledged community. The mall was commercially successful, but the original design was never fully realized, as the intended apartment buildings, schools, medical facilities, park and lake were not built. Because he invented the modern mall, Malcolm Gladwell, writing in ''
The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...
'', suggested that "Victor Gruen may well have been the most influential architect of the twentieth century."Malcolm Gladwell
The Terrazzo Jungle
''
The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...
'', March 15, 2004, Accessed June 12, 2009.
Until the mid-1970s, his office designed over fifty shopping malls in the United States. Gruen was the principal architect for a luxury housing development built on the site of
Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
, Massachusetts' former West End neighborhood. The first of several Gruen towers and plazas was completed in 1962. This development, known as Charles River Park is regarded by many as a dramatically ruthless re-imagining of a former immigrant tenement neighborhood (Gans, O'Conner, The Hub). In 1956, Gruen drafted a comprehensive revitalization plan for the
central business district A central business district (CBD) is the commercial and business centre of a city. It contains commercial space and offices, and in larger cities will often be described as a financial district. Geographically, it often coincides with the "city ...
of downtown
Fort Worth, Texas Fort Worth is the List of cities in Texas by population, fifth-largest city in the U.S. state of Texas and the List of United States cities by population, 13th-largest city in the United States. It is the county seat of Tarrant County, Texas, T ...
, but most components of the plan were never realized. Dr. ETH Ing. Walid Jabri, the architect and structural engineer, designed the 55,000 square-meter business complex Centre Gefinor, which was built in the late 1960s on Rue Clémenceau in
Beirut Beirut, french: Beyrouth is the capital and largest city of Lebanon. , Greater Beirut has a population of 2.5 million, which makes it the third-largest city in the Levant region. The city is situated on a peninsula at the midpoint o ...
, Lebanon for which Victor Gruen designed the complete commercial area on the ground floor and the mezzanine after the completion of the skeleton. Gruen also designed the Greengate Mall in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, which opened in 1965, as well as the Lakehurst Mall in 1971 for Waukegan, Illinois. In 1968, he returned to Vienna, where he engaged in the gradual transformation of the inner city into a pedestrian zone, of which only some parts have been implemented, including Kärntner Straße and
Graben In geology, a graben () is a depressed block of the crust of a planet or moon, bordered by parallel normal faults. Etymology ''Graben'' is a loan word from German, meaning 'ditch' or 'trench'. The word was first used in the geologic conte ...
. In a speech in London in 1978, Gruen disavowed shopping mall developments as having "bastardized" his ideas: "I refuse to pay alimony for those bastard developments." Gruen died on February 14, 1980.


Influence

Gruen's book ''The Heart of our Cities: The Urban Crisis. Diagnosis and Cure'' was a big influence on Walt Disney's city planning ambitions and his ideas for the original
EPCOT Epcot, stylized in all uppercase as EPCOT, is a theme park at the Walt Disney World Resort in Bay Lake, Florida. It is owned and operated by The Walt Disney Company through its Parks, Experiences and Products division. Inspired by an unre ...
.


Gruen v. Gruen

In 1963, on his 21st birthday, his son New York attorney Michael S. Gruen (then a Harvard undergraduate) was given a painting "Schloss Kammer am Attersee II" by
Gustav Klimt Gustav Klimt (July 14, 1862 – February 6, 1918) was an Austrian symbolist painter and one of the most prominent members of the Vienna Secession movement. Klimt is noted for his paintings, murals, sketches, and other objets d'art. Klimt's pr ...
.http://www.bobfarley.org/03lawclasses/09propertylaw/cc03.pdf While ownership of the painting was given to his son in 1963, the elder Gruen continued to hang it in his living room and even paid for insurance and repairs. Upon Gruen's death in 1980, his widow, Kemija, refused to surrender the painting to Michael, resulting in a landmark case in the New York Supreme Court and Court of Appeals. The Court of Appeals ruled the basis of inter vivos gifts, including the plaintiff having the burden of proof to a clear and convincing standard that the chattel was a gift and the required elements of a gift. Kemija Gruen claimed that if the painting was to be given after death, even if such arrangement was made years earlier, then the will, not a letter, would be instructive as to disposition. Michael Gruen was eventually awarded $2.5 million.


Works


Shopping malls designed by Gruen

* Northland Center, Southfield, Michigan, 1954 * Woodmar Plaza, Hammond, Indiana, 1954 *
Westfield Valley Fair Westfield Valley Fair, commonly known as Valley Fair, is a prominent shopping mall in San Jose, California. Valley Fair is the largest mall, by area, in Northern California and has higher sales revenue than all other malls in California, includin ...
, San Jose, California, 1956 * Southdale Center, Edina, Minnesota, 1956 * Riverside Plaza, Riverside, California, 1957 *
Bayfair Center Bayfair Center (orig. Bay-Fair, later Bay Fair, Bayfair Mall) is a regional shopping mall and power center in San Leandro, California. It was among the first malls in the East Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area. Anchor stores are Macy's, Target, ...
, San Leandro, California, 1957 * Eastland Center, Harper Woods, Michigan, 1957 * Glendale Town Center, Indianapolis, Indiana, 1958 * Maryvale Shopping City, Phoenix, Arizona, 1959 *
Kalamazoo Mall The Kalamazoo Mall, the first outdoor pedestrian shopping mall in the United States, is a section of Burdick Street in downtown Kalamazoo, Michigan. Built for $60,000 and opened in 1959, the pedestrian mall became the first of several hundred bu ...
, Kalamazoo, Michigan, 1959 * South Bay Center, Redondo Beach, California, 1959 *
South Shore Plaza South Shore Plaza is a shopping mall in Braintree, Massachusetts, owned by Simon Property Group. It is near the Braintree Split interchange, off the I-93 / US 1 and Route 37 junction. The mall opened as an open-air plaza in 1961; it was enclosed ...
, Braintree, Massachusetts, 1961 * Winrock Center, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1961 *
Cherry Hill Mall The Cherry Hill Mall, owned by Pennsylvania Real Estate Investment Trust (PREIT), was originally known as Cherry Hill Shopping Center, commonly reported as the first indoor, climate-controlled shopping center east of the Mississippi River in the ...
, Cherry Hill, New Jersey, 1961 *
Brookdale Center Shingle Creek Crossing, formerly Brookdale Center, is a regional shopping mall in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota. It became the third enclosed shopping mall in the Twin Cities, after Southdale Center and Apache Plaza. The mall opened in phases begin ...
, Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, 1962 * Midtown Plaza, Rochester, New York, 1962 * Northway Mall, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1962 * Randhurst Mall, Mount Prospect, Illinois, 1962 * South County Center, St Louis Missouri, 1963 *
Westfield Topanga Westfield Topanga & The Village is a shopping mall in the Canoga Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. It spans and houses anchor stores Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom, Macy's, and Target. History Opened on February 10, 1964, Topanga Plaza ...
, Canoga Park, California, 1964 * Fulton Mall, Fresno, California, 1964 * Greengate Mall, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1965 *
South Hills Village South Hills Village is a two-level shopping mall located in the Pittsburgh suburbs of Bethel Park and Upper St. Clair, Pennsylvania, United States. History The mall was originally developed in the mid-1960s by the Oxford Development Co. as t ...
, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1965 * Westland Center, Westland, Michigan, 1965 * Plymouth Meeting Mall, Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania, 1966 * South Coast Plaza, Costa Mesa, California, 1967 * Midland Mall, Warwick, Rhode Island, 1967 * Park Lane Centre, Reno, Nevada, 1967 *
Monroeville Mall Monroeville Mall is a shopping mall located in the municipality of Monroeville, Pennsylvania, east of Pittsburgh. It is located along heavily traveled U.S. Route 22 Business (US 22 Bus.) near the junction of Interstate 376 (I-376) a ...
, Monroeville, Pennsylvania, 1969


Shopping centers designed by Gruen Associates

* Yorktown Center, Lombard, Illinois, 1968 *
Rosedale Center Rosedale Center, commonly known just as Rosedale, is a shopping center in Roseville, Minnesota. The mall is surrounded by suburbs and close to major highways and serves a trade area population almost 2 million people, and boasts 14 million visit ...
, Roseville, Minnesota, 1969 * Southland Center, Taylor, Michigan, 1970 * Lakehurst Mall, Waukegan, Illinois, 1971 * Central City Mall, San Bernardino, California, 1972 * Commons Mall, Columbus, Indiana, 1973 *
Ridgedale Center Ridgedale Center, colloquially known as Ridgedale, is an enclosed shopping mall in Minnetonka, Minnesota, a western suburb of the Twin Cities. It is directly located off I-394/US 12 between Ridgedale Drive and Plymouth Road ( Hennepin CSAH 61). R ...
, Minnetonka, Minnesota, 1974 * Westfield Culver City, Culver City, California, 1975 * Twelve Oaks Mall, Novi, Michigan, 1977 *
Port Plaza Mall Port Plaza Mall (later known as Washington Commons) was an urban area shopping mall/multi-use facility located in downtown Green Bay, Wisconsin. The mall opened on August 10, 1977, and featured 3 anchor stores over the years, with JCPenney and ...
, Green Bay, Wisconsin, 1977


Other

* Millron's Westchester (later The Broadway Westchester), 1949, Westchester, Los Angeles, 1949 * Gateway Center (Newark), in Newark, New Jersey, 1970s


Selected writings

* Victor Gruen, Larry Smith (1960) ''Shopping Towns USA: The Planning of Shopping Centers'' New York: Reinhold * Victor Gruen (1965) ''The Heart of our Cities: The Urban Crisis. Diagnosis and Cure'' London: Thames and Hudson * Victor Gruen (1973) ''Centers for the Urban Environment: Survival of the Cities''. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold


In Media

* Victor Gruen is the namesake of an Australian TV series named Gruen on the ABC which analyses advertising.


See also

* Fox Plaza (San Francisco) * Gateway Center (Newark) * Gruen transfer * South Coast Plaza * Wilshire Beverly Center


References


Notes


Sources

* *


Further reading

* M. Jeffrey Hardwick,
Mall Maker: Victor Gruen, Architect of an American Dream
', University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003, * Anette Baldauf,
Shopping Town USA: Victor Gruen, the Cold War, and the Shopping Mall
. In: Mute 30.1. 2008 * Anette Baldauf and Katharina Weingartner: ''The Gruen Effect. Victor Gruen and the Shopping Mall.'' Documentary, Austria/US 2010, 54 min. *


External links


Victor Gruen papers
at the University of Wyoming - American Heritage Center
Victor Gruen Digital collection
at the American Heritage Center *To read more on research done at the AHC archives for Victor Gruen se
The AHC blog
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gruen, Victor Austrian architects Jewish architects Austrian socialists American socialists Austrian Jews American people of Austrian-Jewish descent Artists from Vienna Columbia University faculty 1903 births 1980 deaths Academy of Fine Arts Vienna alumni Urban theorists 20th-century American architects Emigrants from Austria to the United States after the Anschluss