Birth and Death of American Malls

     In history class, we are researching topics from the 1940's till present and explaining to the viewers why it is significant to the history of the United States and how it played a big part during that time period till the present. The topic I chose was the "Birth and Death of Malls," and the starting of my project was pretty up and down because I couldn't find a site that would exactly tell me the birth of American malls and not malls out of the country. During the process of my searching and web browsing, i came to this article called, "The Rise and Fall of the Shopping Mall," and this article lead me in the right direction of how the mall even started.
   

     The article explained to me on how earlier shopping centers were made or structured and they were often many stores close together on a street or a plaza with multiple stores surrounding a parking lot such as an outside mall. The article mentions how California creates an shopping center in 1947 with many stores and included a big parking lot, so it was labeled as an outside mall. This picture on the side is a picture of the mall in California created in the 1940's and the center was an outside shopping mall that fitted perfect for the weather. While reading the article i mentioned earlier in my research, I found out that Minnesota had an outside mall but form the cold weather, it wasn't quite stable. Problems with the massive weather lead Victor Gruen, a Jewish Bohemian who created shopping centers, to install a roof over the the mall in Minnesota to fix the problem and after that accomplishment, the mall was born in 1956.

    The person in the picture is Victor Gruen and he is the man that produced the malls in America. The article i mentioned earlier produced me with quite information about Gruen and his accomplishments. Gruen creations was pretty successful because he designed over 50 malls in the United states and some of his work expanded to other countries. Continuing my research and looking for more facts about Gruen, I visited this website with a bio about Gruen and the website helped me a lot because it was from the German Historical Institute which was reliable. The website mentioned that Victor establish an firm foundation called the "Victor Gruen Foundation for Enviromental Planning" and it consisted of about 300 staff members and also had different office sites in Los Angeles and in Vienna. His foundation still stands today and his staff are continuing to come up with great ideas to improve the world and its appearance.

This is a picture of the first enclosed mall called Southdale located in Minnesota and it was created by Mr. Gruen in 1956, and stills stands today. Victor emerged the U.S in their appearance because he created so many projects with different styles and one of the things that bugged him most was the position of how cars park around a mall and feels that it needs to be neat  or its ugly, said in the link to the picture. The mall had been born by Victor Gruen but then started to come to a downfall because of problems that occured.

     The mall experienced a downfall in certain areas that caused the mall to slowly die down in the U.S. Ms. Lawson lead me to a different article on AVL called "Bye-Bye, Mall Rats," produced by Julie Rawe and she helped me to understand one of the ways the mall died. The article mentions that rules had started to be set for the teens because of the incidents that were occurring such as respecting their elders in public. Some of the malls had produced the Parent Policy which only allowed the teens to be with a parent after a certain time because US teens were not responsible enough as Julie mentions. Advancing in my research i visited another article about a different reason that caused the mall to die, and the website was like a news feed type of source from a newspaper company in Florida. The article mentioned online shopping and also how many consumers like big single stores and other outlets causing the creators to stop producing enclosed malls. Their were more reasons on how the mall fell but couldn't get all of them down because it was quite a bit. (Fancy Mall in London)

Coming into my conclusion about the birth and death of malls, I feel that the mall industry has benefited the U.S in a lot of ways. Victor Gruen had brought his ideas to U.S from Vienna and he was quite successful in many different states for his ideas.   The creation of the enclosed malls became popular and made almost everywhere because some states have bad weather but overall the structure of the malls are pretty awesome. Wrapping up my project up with my final thoughts, i feel that this project was a great research topic because I didnt know anything about the mall until this research and I really enjoy working on this topic.

Link to project directions and Contract

http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8740987149711393083#editor - directions of project

http://lawsonsrandolphhistory.wikispaces.com/file/view/USH+final+research+project+contract.pdf/325443178/USH%20final%20research%20project%20contract.pdf - contract

Great Depression !!!!!

Apartments for rent, 326 East Sixty-first Street. - Walker Evans, 1938

This is a picture taken by Walker Evans, and it explains the great depresion and gives the viewers a summrization of the plot in a way because of the message its brings. In this photo i think that the apartment has been up for rent for a long time because no one can afford it at the time. The lack of jobs and the lack of government during this time was quite difficult for society and it made it hard for people to support their family and notice that the apartment is for a big family with 3-4 "light" rooms.

369th Infantry in WW1 Cuh .

During this week in class, we have been assigned different topics from WW1 to research and talk about what we learned from it. The topic I choose is 369th Infantry and they were known for being the first African American unit to serve in WW1. At first i thought it was ironic how i chose the topic of African American and the fact that i am one but just saying. I find this topic pretty interesting because i never knew it was an all black army who actually succeeded in the war and accomplish many goals. But i hope you enjoy the information that i present to you.

The 369th Infantry was organized June 29th in 1916 in New York. They were known as the "Harlem Hell Fighters," and once they started the service, they had to prepare themselves to arrive in Europe to battle in France. The unit had a hard time leaving the US and failed 3 times until they finally got it right. They sailed to France but on the way they had many problems dealing with the ship, the soldiers fixed the damages themselves and made it their roughly prepared to start their journey. The unit had to do labor service duties for a while until the commanders decided on what they wanted to do with the group. One month later General John J. Pershing loaned the unit to the 16th division of the French army and the action started.

  The unit was in the trenches for 191 days and that's the longest front line service of any American Regiment. The unit was reassigned to General Lebouc's 161st division to participate in the allied counter attack. Their first attack was at Bois d' Hauza in April but they wasn't to successful and many soldiers were wounded leaving them with only 1,378 men.

The unit had to get back to war strength and quickly went into recruiting. William Hayward  was excited about his recruiting job and he said, "Given the proper training, these men will be the equal of any soldiers in the world." I had a hard time finding out all there attacks because the unit had many attacks on different occasions because they was just doing what they were assigned. I found out that the Americans had disagreements with the French because their rifles they had and the soldiers took the Germans weapons after heavy fighting in Belleau Wood and decided that they were going to use them from now on. 

  The 369th Infantry was an successful goal because they received various awards for their achievements
and recognized for their bravery. I got this huge book from history class that Mrs. Lawson said would be a great source helped me a lot. The book explain what kind of awards the unit received and they were best known for no man of their unit was ever captured or the unit never retreated. The unit was cited eleven times for their bravery and every member of the unit received the French Croix de Guerre for gallary under fire. The 369th band celebrated with great music and had many recording sessions.


The 369th infantry army was not the only group and their was many other groups such as the 371st Infantry Regiment. There was a group called the 8th Illinois(371st Infantry), and the 372nd Infantry. All the groups were successful and was also cited for their bravery. William Hayward had so much confidence in these African Americans and led them to victories of battles and awards that were a life long memory!!!!!

The Great War Archive

On The Great War archive I read about he U-1 and it was the first undersea submarine made by the Imperial Germans. I choose this because I like the sea attacks and the war on water. This title was interesting because the first submarine made was only used for training and they used other submarines to launch an attack. The Germans did secret attacks on sea that made other opponents upset because of the surprise and the damage it did.  http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/gwa

What I have I done ?

Well i haven't quite did to much work on this project, had a very late night with game in New Hope but I will start on it tomorrow in class. I will work hard Mrs.Lawson..... Promiseeeee !!!!

What I learned ??? ..

Well i learned quite a few facts about things i didnt know about the world such as the Brooklyn Bridge, the arcitecture of Wright, and the haunted housesof New York. All the topics were great and I learned something new today in each one but some things stuck out. The house that was made by Wright located in Florence, Alabama was a shocker and it impressed me because it is still here today and is available for open house to the public. The other thing that interested me the most was the characteristics of the Brooklyn Bridge such as the way it was made, the length, and the way it seperated a state. But overall, the post were good and my fellow classmates did a great job.