There was a time when the American shopping mall felt less like a retail complex and more like a kind of suburban cathedral.

Southdale Center in Edina, Minn., America’s first enclosed mall, in the 1950s. Shopping centers may have been pedestrian-friendly in their way, but they were nevertheless islands in a sea of parking. ...

The prevalence of malls has been declining sharply after a rise in popularity in the 1950s and 1960s. In the 1980s, there were nearly 2,500 malls in the United States- now, there are only about 700.