Shoppers came out to party as the Glendale Galleria turned 50 on Wednesday. One of L.A.’s biggest and oldest indoor shopping centers celebrated its golden anniversary with a big party filled with politicians, fancy coffee and an oversized birthday card.
Shopping malls in Southern California have their roots in drive-in markets like Chapman Plaza in Koreatown. Those proto shopping centers were a collection of shops designed for the automobile, with easy parking inside, big signage meant to be read from a distance and distinctive eye-catching architecture.
By the 1950s, outdoor malls like Eastland Shopping Center in West Covina were rows of shops anchored by department stores surrounded by an ocean of parking. In 1973, the Glendale Redevelopment Agency revealed that they were working with developers to acquire 28 acres of Downtown Glendale that would be transformed into an indoor shopping center just west of the city’s historic downtown, along Brand Boulevard to combat what was described as “economic decline” and fear of being upstaged by the Eagle Rock Plaza under construction a few miles away.
The $70 million mall opened with fifty shops, 17 restaurants and was anchored by Ohrbach’s, Buffum’s, JCPenney and the Broadway. Ads boasted about air conditioning and parking for 4,400 cars at the two-story, brown brick center with barrel-vaulted skylights. Dora Verdugo, a descendant of the family that owned the original Spanish land grant where the mall was built, cut the ribbon to dedicate the mall.
Nordstrom and Mervyn’s opened in 1983 and the country’s first Panda Express and Disney store opened there that decade. When developer Rick Caruso opened his Americana at Brand next door, the aging mall kept up by adding new stores and remodeling the center in 2013. The mall is one of the nation’s busiest, with a reported 30 million visitors a year.
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