Victor Gruen is credited with the creation of the first modern shopping mall with his 1956B Southdale Mall in Edina, Minnesota. His malls featured fountains and large trees – things modern malls have removed over the years. But there is one fixture of the mall that is well known and widely overlooked, most people dont realize it was created by a Canadian.

in 1962, Rouse CO. hired Gordon Peck to Develop what would become theB Sherway Gardens Mall in Toronto. Rouse was interested on including a farmers market in the mall, replicating a popular market in Beverly Hills. That market had multiple restaurants, each with their own seating area. To Quote Peck bThey had a fence around each seating area, so if my wife wanted to eat Chinese food and I wanted Italian, we couldnbt sit togetherb

This led to the idea of restaurants with a Common Seating area. Each restaurant would lease their space, and a portion of the common area. in Febuary 1971, Sherway Gardens opened with 16 units and 32,000sq ft of shared restaurant space. The Modern Food Court was born, and the rest is history.