An early shopping center in the United States was Country Club Plaza, which opened in 1924 in Kansas City, Missouri. Other important shopping centers built in the 1920s and early 1930s are the Highland Park Village in Dallas, Texas; River Oaks in Houston, Texas; and Park and Shop in Washington, DC.

However, the concept of the fully-enclosed shopping mall did not appear until the 1950s. The idea was pioneered by the Austrian-born architect and American immigrant Victor Gruen. This new generation, that were eventually called malls, included North gate Mall, built in north Seattle, Washington, USA in 1950, Victor Green's North land Shopping Center built near Detroit, Michigan, USA in 1954, and Gulf gate Mall in Houston were all originally open-air pedestrian shopping centers that later were enclosed as malls. The first enclosed, postwar shopping center (or mall) was the Green-designed South dale Center, which opened in the Twin Cities suburb of Edna, Minnesota, USA in 1956. These malls moved retailing away from the dense, commercial downtown into the largely residential suburbs. This formula (of enclosed space with stores attached, away from downtown, and accessible only by automobile) became a popular way to build retail across the world. In the UK, Chris Street Market was the first pedestrian shopping area built with a road at the shop fronts.

The Bergen Mall, the oldest enclosed mall in New Jersey, opened in Paramus on November 14, 1957, with Dave Garroter, host of The Today Show, serving as master of ceremonies.[2] The mall, located just outside New York City, was planned in 1955 by Allied Stores to have 100 stores and 8,600 parking spaces in a 1.5 million ft² mall that would include a 300,000 ft² Stern's store and two other 150,000 ft² department stores as part of the design. Allied's chairman B. Earl Puckett confidently announced the Bergen Mall as the largest of ten proposed centers, stating that there were 25 cities that could support such centers and that no more than 50 malls of this type would ever be built nationwide

Bolshoy Gostiny Dvor
Since the 18th century, this large yellow building on Nevsky prospekt, has been one of St. Petersburg’s biggest shopping centers. One circuit of Gostiny Dvor, past the dozens of shops and tiny stalls, is a kilometre. The first floor has caviar, souvenirs, shoes, music and cosmetics. The second floor has clothes, designer boutiques, toys, furs and hats.