Northgate - the first mall in America
My Seattle sundae stop in the seventies
Northgate Mall - SEATTLE, WASHINGTON - Night photo (final) 1950
Maybe it’s no surprise that the city that gave us the national brands Costco, Amazon and Nordstrom was also the city that gave us the shopping mall. No, not the shopping center – the shopping mall. If you are still reading this, allow me to assume you are interested in what makes a mall distinct. The shopping mall is typically defined as a double row of stores facing each other with a walkway (no, not a driveway) in between. The impetus for this innovation was the end of World War II and a resultant issue that could only be solved by shopping.
During the war, a population base developed on the eastside of Lake Washington (in the Seattle area) to house workers for war machinery plants. When the war ended, the community of Bellevue wanted to keep the new population in place, but there was a lack of services in the immediate region. Enter local Kemper Freeman Sr., who toured existing shopping centers in Kansas City, Dallas, and California, and came back with the plans for the Bellevue Shopping Square. Built in 1946, the shopping center included a suburban Frederick and Nelson department store as the anchor, along with 20 other stores – Bellevue was saved and eventually became the second downtown in the Seattle area. Bellevue Shopping Square however was not a mall.
Frederick and Nelson’s downtown department store competitor in Seattle was The Bon Marche (The Bon). The Bon had been one-upped by Frederick and Nelson in opening a suburban store with other shops, and that was not to be tolerated. The Bon’s parent company Allied Stores hired architect John Graham Jr. to design a better shopping experience than the new center in Bellevue. Graham came back with a mall: the Northgate Mall to be located on the northside of Seattle, seven and a half miles from downtown. The mall opened in 1950 with The Bon, JJ Newberry, and a Nordstrom shoe store; a JC Penny (Penny’s) store was soon added. In 1965 Nordstrom added an apparel store call Best’s. In 1967 it was rebranded Nordstrom Best and finally about 5 years later it was just Nordstrom (and the rest is history).
Thanks to the success of Northgate, John Graham Jr. became in demand and designed more shopping malls for developers throughout the United States and Canada. He is now more well known as the architect of the Space Needle (1962 - for the World’s Fair).
Living not too far away, I visited Northgate many times over the years until it was closed for complete redevelopment in 2019. The location of Northgate was handy, being right along side the northbound lanes of the I-5 in a mostly residential area. My favorite memories of Northgate are from the mid-seventies when my mom would stop there, and we would go to the Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlor (for ‘fabulous fun’). I loved Farrell’s.
Allow me this digression: Farrell’s first opened in 1963 in Portland Oregon and became a small chain. In 1972, the Marriott Corporation bought it and expanded it to 120 stores around the country by 1975. I’m not sure what happened, but soon Farrell’s at Northgate and seemingly everywhere else disappeared. However, years later in 2006 I was driving in suburban San Diego and I spotted a Farrell’s! I could not contain my excitement after a long 25-year absence! Going in and ordering, it soon all came back to me. The manager was middle aged and told me that this Farrell’s was one of the last three still open anywhere and it would be closing for good at the end of the month. He was sad and I was sad; but at least I got the closure I never thought I needed.
All the remaining Farrell’s did end up closing down in 2006. It was however revived as a franchise by new investors in 2008 and new locations opened in California and Hawaii. It was not a success as by 2019 the last of these new locations closed down.
Farrell’s ‘fabulous fun’ is finally finished.
