By Eric Vondy | The Arizona Republic
If you try to define the characteristics that made Phoenix what it is today, along with ranch houses, palm trees and air conditioning, shopping malls would be high on that list as the rise of the American shopping mall corresponded to the exponential growth of Phoenix in the postwar period.
Between 1950 and 1960 Phoenix grew from a little more than 100,000 people to nearly 440,000. It was then that the shopping mall came into being.
The father of the shopping mall was an Austrian architect named Victor Gruen, who left Vienna for America in 1938. He found success in designing retail spaces and was soon designing storefronts across the nation.
