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London's Early Shopping Malls 1570-1700

William Baer
2006
Abstract: 
Malls are not the invention of modern American life, meeting its obsession with automobiles, merchandising, and leisure shopping. Shakespeare’s London saw their introduction. These London “exchanges” were multi-storied structures, with numerous shops inside, nicely fulfilling shopping and other needs and accounting for more than half of all London’s shops. These exchanges were important real estate expressions of London life and the urban scene. Historians have not paid them sufficient heed.