“J.C. Nichols’s Country Club Plaza [opened in Kansas City in 1923]...was the first mall designed specifically for the automobile, with off-street parking...[It] was to be the town center, not merely a collection of stores. Nichols set the pattern for the luxury malls of today by lavishly landscaping Country Club Plaza and providing fountains, flowers, and walks with benches...Country Club Plaza was designed from the first to provide an emotional, cultural, and socializing center for the community.” (190-91)

(Palen, J. John. The Suburbs. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1995. Print.)