NorthPark Center, sometimes referred to as NorthPark Mall, is an upscale, enclosed

shopping mall A shopping mall (or simply mall) is a North American term for a large indoor shopping center, usually anchored by department stores. The term "mall" originally meant a pedestrian promenade with shops along it (that is, the term was used to refe ...

Dallas, Texas Dallas () is the third largest city in Texas and the largest city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States at 7.5 million people. It is the largest city in and seat of Dallas County w ...

(United States). It is at the intersection of Loop 12 (Northwest Highway) and

US 75 U.S. Route 75 is a major north–south U.S. Highway that extends in the central United States. The highway's northern terminus is in Noyes, Minnesota, at the Canadian border, where it once continued as Manitoba Highway 75 on the other side ...

(

North Central Expressway North is one of the four compass points or cardinal directions. It is the opposite of south and is perpendicular to east and west. ''North'' is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating direction or geography. Etymology The word ''north'' is ...

). Opened in 1965, it now has over 235 stores and restaurants and annual sales of over $1 billion. It is at present, the 20th-largest shopping mall in the country. Its anchors include

Nordstrom Nordstrom, Inc. () is an American luxury department store chain headquartered in Seattle, Washington, and founded by John W. Nordstrom and Carl F. Wallin in 1901. The original Wallin & Nordstrom store operated exclusively as a shoe store, and ...

Macy's Macy's (originally R. H. Macy & Co.) is an American chain of high-end department stores founded in 1858 by Rowland Hussey Macy. It became a division of the Cincinnati-based Federated Department Stores in 1994, through which it is affiliated wi ...

(formerly

Foley's Foley's was a chain of department stores owned by May Department Stores and headquartered in Downtown Houston, Texas. On August 30, 2005, the division was dissolved and operation of the stores was assumed by Federated's Macy's West and Macy's ...

Dillard's Dillard's, Inc. is an upscale American department store chain with approximately 282 stores in 29 states and headquartered in Little Rock, Arkansas. Currently, the largest number of stores are located in Texas with 57 and Florida with 42. The ...

Neiman Marcus Neiman Marcus Group, Inc. is an American integrated luxury retailer headquartered in Dallas, Texas, which owns Neiman Marcus, Bergdorf Goodman, Horchow, and Last Call. Since September 2021, NMG has been owned by a group of investment compani ...

AMC Theatres AMC Entertainment Holdings, Inc. (d/b/a AMC Theatres, originally an abbreviation for American Multi-Cinema; often referred to simply as AMC and known in some countries as AMC Cinemas or AMC Multi-Cinemas) is an American movie theater chain fou ...

, and

Eataly Eataly is a chain of large format/footprint Italian marketplaces (food halls) comprising a variety of restaurants, food and beverage counters, bakery, retail items, and a cooking school. Eataly was founded by Oscar Farinetti, an entrepreneur for ...

History

In the early 1960s, developer

Raymond Nasher Raymond Nasher (October 26, 1921 – March 16, 2007) was a Boston Latin School (1939) and Duke University alumnus (1943) who was an avid art collector. Together with his wife Patsy, he amassed a substantial number of the world's most renowned ...

leased a cotton field on the edge of Dallas and hired E.G Hamilton of Harrell+Hamilton Architects. NorthPark Center opened in 1965, anchored by

Titche-Goettinger Titche-Goettinger (later known as Titche's) was a department store chain based in Dallas, Texas (United States). It was established in 1902 and was a major player in the Dallas retail market until its merger with Joske's, which was later absor ...

and

Penneys Primark Stores Limited (; trading as Penneys in the Republic of Ireland) is an Irish multinational fast fashion retailer with headquarters in Dublin, Ireland. It has stores across Europe and in the United States. The Penneys brand is not u ...

, other stores included

Woolworth's Woolworth, Woolworth's, or Woolworths may refer to: Businesses * F. W. Woolworth Company, the original US-based chain of "five and dime" (5¢ and 10¢) stores * Woolworths Group (United Kingdom), former operator of the Woolworths chain of shops ...

, Doubleday,

Kroger The Kroger Company, or simply Kroger, is an American retail company that operates (either directly or through its subsidiaries) supermarkets and multi-department stores throughout the United States. Founded by Bernard Kroger in 1883 in Cinci ...

, and more. The first major expansion happened in 1973 when a new wing opened anchored by

Lord & Taylor Lord & Taylor was the oldest brick and mortar department store in the United States, in business from 1826 to 2020. The brand was purchased during former owner Le Tote's 2020 liquidation bankruptcy and relaunched by new owner, Saadia Group, as ...

. In early 2004 Lord & Taylor closed after being at the mall for nearly 30 years. For its first 34 years, NorthPark stood on land leased from the Caruth family's foundation. David and Nancy A. Nasher (Nancy is Raymond's daughter) purchased the property in 1999. In 2006, NorthPark opened to an expansion that more than doubled the size of the existing center, adding an 88,000 sq ft For its expansion, NorthPark brought back the same architecture firm that designed the original section to ensure its aesthetic was respected and enhanced. The expansion also included a new collection of specialty retail shops and a third-floor 15-screen AMC theater. The two-story expansion provided for circulation around the Center by forming a continuous loop through the complex. In November 2007, NorthPark Center was named one of the "seven retail wonders of the modern world" along with the Neiman Marcus’ store at

Natick Collection The Natick Mall (previously named the Natick Collection) is a shopping mall in Natick, Massachusetts. The original facility was the first enclosed shopping mall in Greater Boston upon opening in 1966; it was demolished and replaced by a larger ...

in Massachusetts, Japan's Mikimoto store in Ginza, England's Bullring shopping center, Poland's

Złote Tarasy The Złote Tarasy (''Golden Terraces'') is a commercial, office, and entertainment complex in the center of Warsaw, Poland, located next to the Warszawa Centralna railway station between the Jana Pawła II and Emilii Plater streets. It opened ...

in Warsaw, Apple's flagship store in New York City and Italy's

Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II The Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II () is Italy's oldest active shopping gallery and a major landmark of Milan in Italy. Housed within a four-story double arcade in the centre of town, the ''Galleria'' is named after Victor Emmanuel II, the first ki ...

. NorthPark is the home of Texas' first H&M, a fashion label from Sweden. H&M has since opened other locations in Texas. The

American Film Institute The American Film Institute (AFI) is an American nonprofit film organization that educates filmmakers and honors the heritage of the motion picture arts in the United States. AFI is supported by private funding and public membership fees. Leade ...

's Dallas International Film Festival was sponsored by NorthPark Center in 2009. The event was held in the AMC NorthPark 15 Theater, which also hosted screenings during the festival's first two years. Barneys New York closed in April 2012 after facing fierce competition from other luxury retailers after it opened in 2006. The space is currently split between different stores most notably

Arhaus Arhaus is an American retail chain that designs and sells home furnishings online and through its retail stores and catalogs. The company is headquartered in Boston Heights, Ohio. History Arhaus was founded in 1986 by John Reed and his father, J ...

which opened in 2014 and

which opened in December 2020. Northpark Mall has a currency exchange at Travelex and tax free shopping with Texas sales tax refunds at TaxFree Shopping Ltd.

Art in the mall

NorthPark Center was designed to include art as integral part of its interior landscape. NorthPark received the

American Institute of Architects The American Institute of Architects (AIA) is a professional organization for architects in the United States. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the AIA offers education, government advocacy, community redevelopment, and public outreach to su ...

Award for "Design of the Decade - 1960s" as one of the first commercial centers in the United States to create space for the display of fine art.

Architecture

NorthPark Center was designed by

Omniplan OmniPlan is a planning and project management software product from The Omni Group, headquartered in Seattle, Washington. The software was released as a public beta on June 6, 2006. In a June 2007 evaluation of OmniPlan 1.0, Macworld, a web site ...

in the early 1960s. For its recent expansion, NorthPark's owners returned to the architectural firm responsible for the 1960s design. The expansion turned NorthPark's original U-shape into a square design surrounding a landscaped garden known as "CenterPark." Featuring a series of lawns, 41-year-old live oaks and red oaks, seasonal flowers, crushed granite walkways, and a small collection of art, CenterPark doubles as a park area for visitors and customers. NorthPark Center received both the

Texas Society of Architects The Texas Society of Architects is an organization based in Austin, Texas, that represents over 7,000 architects in Texas that are members of the American Institute of Architects (AIA). The mission statement of the Society, is "to be the voice for ...

' annual Design Award and the 25-year Design Award in 2007 for the original design. After a major expansion, at , it is now the second-largest mall in Texas and the 21st-largest in the U.S. based on total square feet of retail space (

gross leasable area In architecture, construction, and real estate, floor area, floor space, or floorspace is the area (measured as square feet or square metres) taken up by a building or part of it. The ways of defining "floor area" depend on what factors of the buil ...

) according to the

International Council of Shopping Centers The International Council of Shopping Centers, doing business as ICSC, is the global trade association of what it calls the "Marketplaces Industry" (i.e., shopping centers, shopping malls, and all other retail real estate). Founded in 1957, it fe ...

Public library

NorthPark Center hosts Bookmarks, a Dallas Public Library for children 12 years and younger. Bookmarks is the first children's library in the United States to be in a shopping center.

Location

The Center is at the intersection of the Central Expressway and Loop 12/Northwest Highway, located to the east and south of the center respectively. NorthPark is also across the freeway from The Shops at Park Lane, a mixed-use development with which includes shopping. NorthPark Center is the most popular shopping center in North Texas, with over 27 million visitors a year.

Television and film location

NorthPark's interior has been a location for scenes in television and film productions. '' Dr. T and the Women'', a

Robert Altman Robert Bernard Altman ( ; February 20, 1925 – November 20, 2006) was an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. He was a five-time nominee of the Academy Award for Best Director and is considered an enduring figure from the New H ...

film, has a scene in which the character Kate ( Farrah Fawcett) visits stores in the area of the Neiman Marcus court, then is seen around the Dillard's court fountain—which she eventually finds herself in, frolicking and splashing in the buff. '' True Stories'', a 1986 movie co-starring

David Byrne David Byrne (; born 14 May 1952) is a Scottish-American singer, songwriter, record producer, actor, writer, music theorist, visual artist and filmmaker. He was a founding member and the principal songwriter, lead singer, and guitarist of ...

, with one scene of a fashion show held at a mall in Virgil, Texas (the movie's fictional setting) during a town celebration; the interior portion of the scene was filmed in a mid-court area between Neiman Marcus and Dillard's. Byrne and co-star

John Goodman John Stephen Goodman (born June 20, 1952) is an American actor. He gained national fame for his role as the family patriarch Dan Conner in the ABC comedy series '' Roseanne'' (1988–1997; 2018), for which he received a Golden Globe Award, an ...

were also filmed walking down one of the mall's corridors. NP AMC

When the mall reopened in 2006, ''The Dallas Observer'' used the mall's ambiance as documented in the film as a source of comparison. "The place looks like a tricked-out spaceship compared to the stark, cold NorthPark in which True Stories was filmed exactly 20 years ago. It looks like the old NorthPark—damned if you can tell difference between the old bricks and the new ones; this thing looks like it was built in a time machine—yet it's brighter too, a friendlier version of the same ol' place." The exterior of Virgil's mall wasn't of NorthPark—the producers used the outside of the former

Big Town Mall Big Town Mall was a shopping mall located in the Dallas, Texas, Dallas suburb of Mesquite, Texas. Built in 1959, it was the first enclosed shopping mall in the Southwest United States, Southwest. Its last anchor tenant (Montgomery Ward) closed in ...

in nearby

Mesquite Mesquite is a common name for several plants in the genus ''Prosopis'', which contains over 40 species of small leguminous trees. They are native to dry areas in the Americas. They have extremely long roots to seek water from very far under grou ...

References

External links

NorthPark Center Official Site
{{Commonscat, NorthPark Center Shopping malls in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex Economy of Dallas Buildings and structures in Dallas Shopping malls established in 1965 1965 establishments in Texas