Exhibit Opening: Architect Victor Gruen, Father of the Shopping Mall

The retail environment of the 21st century has undergone significant changes: shopping malls, once the definition of modern convenience and luxury, are struggling with many facing closure and redevelopment into mixed-use structures. In this exhibit, we will revisit the life and professional career of a bold visionary and one of America’s great urban planners: Victor Gruen.

Although he later rejected his brainchild, as the focus became entirely commercial rather than the combination of social experience and retail he and his German American wife Elsie Krummeck had originally envisioned in the increasingly car-centric and suburban America of the 1950s, his pioneering and visionary spirit have made him one of the most influential architects and urban planners of the 20th century. His legacy lives on, not just in re-designed shopping centers that come closer to his original idea, but also in the pedestrian zones in many cities across Austria and Germany, which were developed in the 1970s and 1980s based on the model of Vienna.

Refreshments will be served.

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Host or Publisher German-American Heritage Foundation of the USA