Sunday, September 20, 2026

Question: In 1959, Kalamazoo built something downtown that no other American city had. What was it?

Answer: The first outdoor pedestrian mall in the country. The city closed two blocks of Burdick Street to cars and turned them into a landscaped walkway with benches and fountains, hoping to lure shoppers back from the new suburban centers. Dozens of cities copied the idea over the next two decades. Most of those imitators eventually reopened to traffic, and Kalamazoo itself let cars back onto part of the mall in 1998, but the downtown stretch is still known as the Kalamazoo Mall.