The Cherry Hill Mall is a super-regional shopping mall in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. The mall is within the unincorporated namesake neighborhood and census-designated place of Cherry Hill Mall.
The mall was developed by James Rouse, working in partnership with Strawbridge and Clothier. Designed by architect Victor Gruen, the Cherry Hill Mall opened in 1961 as one of the first enclosed malls in the United States. PREIT acquired the mall in 2003.
Location
The Cherry Hill Mall is located at the interchange of Route 38 and Haddonfield Road. It is located west of the Moorestown Mall on Route 38.
Description
Anchored by Macy's, Nordstrom, and JCPenney, the Cherry Hill Mall is an L-shaped enclosed mall with a gross leasable area of . The original portion of the mall is on a single level. Later wings, opened in 1978 and 2009, are two-level. Macy's is the mall's largest anchor, with three floors and of retail area. The JCPenney and the Nordstrom both contain two floors. The mall includes a row of exterior-facing casual dining restaurants, as well as a 10-unit food court. The Container Store and Crate & Barrel occupy freestanding pad sites on the property and serve as junior anchors.
History
Initial plans
In December 1953, New Jersey developer Eugene Mori announced plans to build a $15 million shopping center, to be called Cherry Hill, on an tract of land in Delaware Township. Mori, who had already built the Garden State Racetrack nearby, was also in the process of building a hotel called the Cherry Hill Inn on a different portion of the site. The mall would occupy the former site of the George Jaus farm. The "Cherry Hill" name came from another farm that once operated in the area, with the name first appearing on a property deed from 1838.
Strawbridge & Clothier, a Philadelphia-based department store chain, signed onto the project in January of 1955 as the center's primary anchor tenant. Strawbridge had been seeking a New Jersey location to expand their presence in the Delaware Valley, and the selection of Cherry Hill was the result of a two-year search. The Cherry Hill site would also include 50 smaller shops, making it one of the largest shopping centers of its era. With the signing of Strawbridge, Mori claimed that construction on the center could begin imminently. In November of 1956, the Cherry Hill project signed its second tenant, a Food Fair supermarket. At that point, the developers said the shopping center would open in September of 1958, with of retail space.
In January 1957, the project's developers wrote an op-ed for the Courier-Post stating that the center was over two-thirds leased. They said significant progress had been made, writing "Although no shovels have moved any earth as yet, the past year has seen the completion of utility plans, traffic patterns, and working drawings...". By the summer of 1958, however, there were still no signs of construction, and rumors of the project's demise were spreading.
Behind the scenes, Mori was struggling to find sources of financing for the project. Financial institutions were skeptical of the location's market potential. Analysts believed the proposed shopping center was too far from Camden, the nearest city.
In August 1958, Strawbridge and Clothier signed a purchase agreement to take over the project from Mori.
James Rouse and Victor Gruen take control
On March 12, 1960, new plans for the Cherry Hill Shopping Center were unveiled. Strawbridge and Clothier would partner with James Rouse and his firm, Community Research and Development (a subsidiary of The Rouse Company and Connecticut General), to build the center. Instead of the previous plan's open-air concept, Cherry Hill would instead be constructed as a fully enclosed mall. The Courier-Post explained that the mall would be "extensively landscaped in a tropical plant motif", featuring benches and a sidewalk cafe to create "an atmosphere comparable to the European shopping arcade."
Rouse had already built two enclosed malls: the Harundale Mall in Glen Burnie, Maryland, which opened in 1958, and the Charlottetown Mall in Charlotte, North Carolina, which opened in 1959. Both malls were less than half the size of his proposed New Jersey mall. According to Rouse biographer Joshua Olsen, this new project at Cherry Hill "would secure his reputation as a developer and prove to everyone in America that enclosed malls were here to stay."
Rouse hired architect Victor Gruen for the task of designing the Cherry Hill Mall. Gruen had previously designed America's first fully enclosed, climate-controlled mall, Minnesota's Southdale Center, which had opened in 1956.
Construction
Strawbridge & Clothier held a groundbreaking ceremony for their Cherry Hill store on September 21, 1960.
Construction on the mall itself began in November 1960. The mall's first phase of construction would cost $30 million, totaling and 75 stores, with opening targeted for the fall of 1961. The project involved 700 construction workers and tradesmen.
During a press event held on August 8, 1961, Rouse said Cherry Hill would be "the finest enclosed mall in the country, because here we have been able to incorporate all the improvements, and eliminate some mistakes we have made in previous shopping centers."
Architecture and design
The mall's exterior was simple, described by the Courier-Post as an "elegant structure of white brick, with accents of fieldstone and decorative metal siding." For shopping centers, Gruen believed in a concept he called "introverted architecture", whereby the building's exterior was kept understated and reserved. Delivery areas were screened with walls and landscaping, while Strawbridge & Clothier had its own underground tunnel for deliveries.
Gruen's work primarily focused on the mall's interior spaces. The centerpiece of the building was the Cherry Court, which featured a tall arched ceiling, along with trees, flowers, and a "huge fountain" with "many changing spouts." Years later, Rouse would reflect on the success of the mall's design, writing to Gruen, "There is no space we have produced that is as grand and floating as Cherry Court."
Two separate wings, or "malls", branched out from the Cherry Court. The Delaware Mall was home to a movie theater, a community meeting room, and a sidewalk cafe. The Penn Mall was anchored by the Market Court, which was designed to resemble an international bazaar or European market square. Rouse loved small, independent shops, and he believed that filling a court with shops selling unique foreign goods would draw traffic to that end of the mall.
Flooring in the mall was a mix of "quarry tile, terrazzo, scored concrete and colored concrete in a variety of patterns." Artificial lighting was supplemented with skylights and clerestory windows.
Gruen had originally intended the indoor landscaping to be a subtle design, but Rouse went a different direction. Landscape architect Lewis J. Clarke was brought in to design the mall's indoor gardens. One of his additions to the mall was the Birdcage Garden, an aviary of tropical birds. A tall enclosure housed finches, toucans, and myna birds. The area around the aviary featured banana trees and a flowing stream. Other features included a waterfall, wooden bridge, and gazebo. The mall contained a total of 14,000 living trees and plants, and employed two full-time gardeners.
Design philosophy
Developer James Rouse and architect Victor Gruen both had "theorized extensively about the social effects of urban design" and had strong feelings about the ways shopping centers could transform suburban life. The Cherry Hill Mall would serve as a real-world laboratory to test those theories.
Rouse believed that a mall should "serve the community so that it becomes central to the community, that the community adopts it as its center and develops deep feelings of pride and enthusiasm and concern about it, and inevitably, therefore, shops there. The shortest route to achieving relative invulnerability [...] is to build a center of such quality and such importance to the community that it doesn't become readily assailable".
A key part of this strategy involved adding a community meeting room to the Cherry Hill Mall. This facility, which consisted of a 400-seat main hall, a separate 90-seat meeting room, and a full kitchen, could be rented for a nominal cost by churches and other non-profit organizations.
Gruen believed that suburbs lacked a sense of community. He thought enclosed malls could solve that problem by creating a "town square" for those areas lacking a traditional downtown. For Gruen, enclosing shopping centers was an important step, as it allowed them "to overcome the 'vulgarity' of sprawling highway strips" and made them more useful as community spaces. According to a Courier-Post article, Gruen wanted people to feel like they were shopping on an outdoor street, while offering "welcome relief from the noise, dirt and cars which spoil many shopping streets."
Grand opening
The Cherry Hill Mall officially opened to the public on October 11, 1961, "with pomp and ceremony and under the most auspicious circumstances", according to a newspaper report in the Courier-Post. The writer reported: "Every expectation was fulfilled. The crowds that swarmed into and through the center during the day and evening were amazed and delighted at what they saw [...] There is no doubt that Cherry Hill Center is and will be a success from its first day of operation."
Approximately 3,500 people attended the mall's opening ceremony, which included a speech from New Jersey's then-governor, Robert Meyner. In total, a crowd of 25,000 people visited the mall on its first day.
At its opening, the Cherry Hill Mall was believed to be the largest enclosed mall in the eastern US, and one of only eight enclosed malls in the United States. The mall's opening drew significant national attention, covered by Reader's Digest, The Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times Magazine.
Strawbridge & Clothier
The Strawbridge & Clothier location at Cherry Hill would be the chain's fourth and largest branch location, with the three-story building covering of land.
The store opened onto the Cherry Court, with a second-floor restaurant terrace and a main entrance that was more than long. A staircase led from Cherry Court directly to the restaurant, which specialized in Italian cuisine.
The Cherry Hill store was an immediate success and became Strawbridge's most profitable branch location.
Junior anchors
While Strawbridge & Clothier opened as the mall's only full-line department store, Cherry Hill initially contained three other large retailers.
One of the mall's largest tenants was a Woolworth's, which had its own exterior entrance. At its opening, it was the largest single-story Woolworth's store in the country. Woolworth's also operated two of the mall's early dining options: In addition to a standard Woolworth's Harvest House Cafeteria, the Cherry Hill location also featured a diner-style restaurant in the middle of the mall corridor, called the Cherry Hill Grill. Waitresses worked on a sunken floor, allowing them to be at eye level with their customers, who were seated at swivel stools.
S.S. Kresge, a variety store chain similar to Woolworth's—and the predecessor of Kmart—was another prominent tenant during the mall's early years.
Also opening with the mall was a Food Fair supermarket.
Entertainment venues
A single-screen movie theater opened at the mall in March 1962. Occupying , the theater held a total capacity of 1,600 guests. Simply called the Cherry Hill Cinema, the theater was located in the Delaware wing. In 1970, the theater was divided into two screens. It remained a twin-screen theater until its eventual closure in 1987.
Two attractions for children operated at the mall during portions of the 1960s and '70s.