BIGMallrat | Retail history of Northern California

Town Center Corte Madera, originally known as Corte Madera Center, officially opened its doors on July 17, 1958, bringing the suburban shopping boom to Marin County. Just a few months later, JCPenney joined the growing lineup, followed by Montgomery Ward, which opened on March 16, 1960. Like many mid-century shopping centers across the Bay Area, Corte Madera Center arrived with ambition and architectural flair. Designed for easy access just off U.S. Route 101, it featured large department stores alongside specialty retailers, a format that would become a standard in American retail. Today, Town Center Corte Madera stands as a revitalized open-air shopping hub, blending its historic roots with modern lifestyle and community-focused retail. A vintage postcard glimpse of Town Center Corte Madera One of the best glimpses we have of the center’s early years is a 1960s postcard, most likely taken not long after Montgomery Ward arrived. The scene is carefully staged—photographer Mike Robe...

A modest beginning in 1955 Country Club Plaza, located in Sacramento, California, opened on June 23, 1955. Initially, it was a simple strip of shops fronting Watt Avenue, directly across from the earlier Country Club Centre, which had debuted in August 1952 with a JCPenney anchor. At the time, the Watt Avenue corridor was rapidly transforming into Sacramento’s premier retail zone, competing closely with the newly built Arden Fair, where Hale’s had just opened weeks earlier. 1952 grand opening advertisement for Country Club Plaza, featuring a bird's-eye rendering of the original layout—including an auto parts store and early storefronts along Watt Avenue. Expansion and a boost from Weinstock’s In 1961, Country Club Plaza expanded significantly with the opening of a Weinstock-Lubin department store (later renamed Weinstock’s). The addition helped transform the plaza from a neighborhood shopping center into a major regional retail destination. Early newspaper rendering of Sacram...

Originally published in 2006; expanded and updated in 2026. Macy’s arrived in the Bay Area long before the suburban mall era, establishing its San Francisco presence in 1945 with the acquisition of O’Connor, Moffatt & Co. From that downtown foundation, it expanded outward for the next half-century, first through acquisitions and later as a defining anchor of the region’s new shopping centers. As the postwar suburbs grew, Macy’s became closely tied to the development of enclosed malls across Northern California. In many cases, it did not simply occupy space in these centers—it arrived with them, helping establish the commercial cores around which new communities formed. Malls like Valley Fair, Bay Fair, and Stoneridge were not just locations of Macy’s stores; they were part of the same development wave that reshaped the Bay Area itself. By the mid-1990s, that system was already under strain. The region had too much retail space, too many overlapping shopping centers, and a departm...

Once a quiet dairy farm on the edge of San Mateo, California, the site of Hillsdale Mall would grow into one of the most recognizable shopping destinations on the San Francisco Peninsula. From its sun-soaked, open-air roots in the 1950s to its glossy, two-story expansion in the 1980s, Hillsdale mirrored the rise of suburbia, mall culture, and regional retail identity. Today, we look back at Hillsdale’s transformation—through archival detail—with a few personal glimpses of what it was like to experience the center during its retail heyday. 1954: A mall grows in San Mateo When Hillsdale Mall officially opened in November 1954, it marked more than the debut of a shopping plaza—it reflected California’s postwar suburban boom. Developed by David D. Bohannon on what had once been a dairy farm, the center was anchored by a brand-new Macy’s, which opened on November 19. But Hillsdale’s retail story actually began earlier, with a standalone Sears that opened nearby on March 22, 1951, serving ...

Originally published in 2006; expanded and updated in 2026. For a century, The Emporium and H. C. Capwell were among Northern California's most influential department store chains. Beginning as downtown flagships in San Francisco and Oakland, the two retailers helped define shopping for generations before expanding into suburban shopping centers across the Bay Area. Although The Emporium and Capwell's had operated under common ownership since 1969, the combined Emporium-Capwell name became familiar to Bay Area shoppers during the 1980s. The Emporium (1896–1980) The Emporium began in San Francisco on May 25, 1896, opening a grand department store at Market Street and Powell Street. The store quickly became one of the city's most recognizable retail landmarks, famous for its glass-domed rotunda, elaborate displays, and extensive selection of merchandise. For much of the twentieth century, The Emporium represented the premier department store for Northern California shopp...

When Sunvalley opened in 1967, it wasn't designed to be merely a collection of stores. With its Great Hall, public art, ice rink, cinema, and department-store anchors, it was conceived as a complete shopping destination—a self-contained world for the rapidly growing suburbs of Contra Costa County. Sunvalley opens in 1967: a new era of shopping in Concord Although Sears preceded the mall's opening (arriving October 19, 1966), Sunvalley opened on August 3, 1967. Back then, they weren’t subtle about it. No, no. They called it the world's largest enclosed shopping center—two levels of pure retail bliss designed by Avner Naggar and developed by Bayshore Properties.  The ribbon cutting featured none other than the famous singer Tony Martin. The mall had everything: a cinema, an ice rink below ground (arrived in 1969), department stores big enough to have their own weather systems, and a parking lot that could swallow 9,000 cars whole. And because it was the future, it was also...