Why Southdale Turned the Shopping Street Inward
When Southdale Center opened in Edina, Minnesota, in 1956, its enclosure changed more than the weather shoppers felt. In an open-air shopping district, each store meets the street; at Southdale, stores instead faced an interior court, and shoppers moved between them through shared indoor space. The building worked like a sheltered street, with a roof and controlled indoor climate standing between visitors and Minnesota’s cold winters.
That arrangement made the mall’s interior—not its exterior walls—the center of the shopping experience. A shopper could leave one store and reach another without stepping outdoors, while the common court gave people a place to gather between visits. Southdale’s design also included landscaped indoor space, bringing features associated with a public square inside the commercial building.
A New Kind of Shopping Destination
The inward-facing plan was part of architect Victor Gruen’s larger ambition for the mall: not simply a row of shops, but a place where shopping and social life could meet. The climate-controlled enclosure made that idea practical in a region where outdoor walking could be uncomfortable for much of the year. It also meant the stores could orient their entrances toward a shared, protected route rather than compete for attention along an exposed exterior street.
Southdale helped establish the enclosed mall as a recognizable building type. Its windowless shopping environment was not an incidental feature; it followed from the basic design choice to make the interior court the destination. In winter, the trip from shop to shop could remain an indoor walk—one reason the mall’s “street” was built inside at all.
