|
Midtown Plaza (1962–2008) was an indoor shopping mall in downtown Rochester, New York, the first urban indoor mall in the United States. The site is being redeveloped for a variety of uses. ==History== Designed by Victor Gruen, Midtown Plaza was dedicated on April 10, 1962 as the first downtown indoor mall in the United States. The first enclosed shopping center had been Southdale Center in suburban Minneapolis in 1956, also designed by Gruen. The idea for this mall started with discussions between Gilbert J.C. McCurdy, owner of the McCurdy's department stores and Maurice F. Forman, owner of the B. Forman Co. department stores. At that time strip plazas were growing in popularity. Though both owners had opened branch stores they were concerned about Downtown Rochester's viability and came up with the idea of an indoor shopping center. Gruen was at the height of his influence when Midtown was completed and the project attracted international attention, including a nationally televised feature report on NBC-TV's Huntley-Brinkley Report the night of its opening in April 1962. City officials and planners from around the globe came to see Gruen's solution to the mid-century urban crisis. Midtown won several design awards. Gruen described the aerial view of Rochester as a giant parking lot with a few buildings to inconvenience traffic flow. His intention was to create a pedestrian friendly town square for Rochester, NY, a medium sized city near the mouth of the Genesee River. He incorporated art, benches, fountains, a four hundred seat auditorium and a sidewalk cafe into his plans hoping to encourage the sort of social intermingling that he saw as the enriching essence of urban life. Later in life Gruen dismissed the strictly commercial suburban malls as "those bastard developments" but continued to hold Midtown in high regard. It is probably the project that most closely followed his plan and shared his civic vision. In addition to the shopping center, the Plaza also includes a skyscraper office building, which at one time held an upscale hotel and restaurant — the Top Of The Plaza — on its top four floors. Gap Mangione played at the Top Of The Plaza several times, and the restaurant was a popular site for receptions, business parties and special-occasion dinners. Midtown Plaza was economically vibrant, and a center of retail activity for its region, during its first 20 years of operation. It began to struggle in the 1980s as a number of suburban shopping malls opened outside of the city, while the region's population increasingly spread outward from the city center into suburban and even rural areas. Surrounded by pockets of poverty, Midtown struggled to keep tenants. Midtown's struggles increased in the mid-1990s when the mall's two anchors, McCurdy's and Forman's, closed in 1994. Their closing was quickly followed by the closing of the Midtown branch of Wegmans Food Markets, a regional grocery chain. Once considered the sign of a New Urbanism, the Plaza was placed on the list of 2002 Empire Zones, and grew to be considered a symbolic victim of suburban sprawl. During its last years, the mall's tenants included Peebles department store, Radio Shack, Payless Shoes, some downscale clothing stores, a dollar store, two jewelry stores, a gift shop, a Record Theatre store which became the last original tenant in the mall and a US post office. Located directly underneath Midtown Plaza was a three level, 1,843 space parking garage. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Midtown Plaza (Rochester)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|