If you are shopping for gifts, kids clothes, shoes, or that special dress; shop in New York. You will find many places to shop at the malls in the lower-Hudson Valley. Shopping in Westchester, Rockland, and Orange counties offers a myriad of choices. For the best outlet shopping, find designer outlets at Woodbury Commons in Orange County, New York.

The Hudson River Valley offers boutique stores, shopping centers, malls and outlets among the many places to shop. Find malls, shopping centers, outlets, and charming specialty stores in the towns and villages of Westchester, Rockland, Orange and Dutchess. Visit quaint villages and charming towns throughout the Hudson Valley when you want to shop for antiques, collectibles, and period furniture.

Westchester County, in the lower-Hudson Valley, is home to terrific malls, major department stores and shopping centers. White Plains, located in Westchester, offers excellent malls, shopping centers, and more. White Plains shopping includes The Westchester Mall, Galleria Mall and Bloomingdales. For upscale shopping, visit The Westchester and enjoy the best shopping experience. With total skylighting above, marble and carpeted floors below, sculptures and unequaled customer service, The Westchester is home to New York State's first Nordstrom, Neiman-Marcus and more than 150 fine upscale stores. Stop by for lunch at P.F. Chang's China Bistro or pamper yourself at Premier Atelier Salon or Elizabeth Arden Red Door Salon & Spa. Shopping in White Plains, Westchester's premier shopping area, will not disappoint.

Rockland County, in the lower-Hudson Valley, offering many shopping centers and malls, is also home to the Palisades Center Mall. Palisades Center is located in West Nyack, Rockland County in the Hudson River Valley. The Palisades Center offers four floors of shopping and exciting entertainment. Shopping includes books, department stores, electronics, home stores, jewelry, shoes, maternity, sports and specialty stores, and toys & hobbies. The Palisades Center has its own Imax Theater, ice skating rink, and many excellent restaurants.

Putnam County, in the lower-Hudson Valley, is home to many lovely areas including the charming village of Cold Spring. Cold Spring is situated on the eastern banks of the Hudson River in the Southwest corner of Putnam County, New York. Cold Spring offers many excellent restaurants, specialty shops and stores that look like they are from days-gone-by. Enjoy lovely views of the Hudson River where you can kayak, go boating, fishing and enjoy many more outdoor activities. Visit Cold Spring and have a fabulous day perusing the antique shops and quaint boutiques followed by a picnic on the banks of the Hudson. You may even hear the sounds of music near the gazebo, a popular venue for live performances and concerts.

Orange County, home to Central Valley in the lower-Hudson Valley, offers the best outlet shopping in Woodbury Common Premium Outlets. Woodbury Commons offers about 220 outlet stores. Visit the world-famous Woodbury Common Premium Outlets and shop at designer and brand-name outlet stores less than one hour’s comfortable bus drive from Manhattan. Woodbury Common Premium Outlets offers every day savings of 25% to 65% in a colonial American village setting. Woodbury Commons offers impressive savings at Adidas, Ann Taylor, Balenciaga, Banana Republic, Burberry, Coach, Chloe, Dolce & Gabbana, Fendi, Gap Outlet, Giorgio Armani, Gucci, J.Crew, Jimmy Choo, Lacoste, Neiman Marcus and more.

Dutchess County, located in New York State's mid-Hudson Valley, offers antique shops, specialty food marts, equestrian apparel shops, and many unique specialty stores. Visit one of the shopping malls in Dutchess; or shop at Montgomery Row in beautiful and historic Rhinebeck. Montgomery Row is an award-winning outdoor shopping center with an exceptional collection of specialty shops, fine food marts, clothes and boutique shopping. Visit Poughkeepsie Plaza, an enclosed one-level plaza with easy access featuring locally owned & operated stores plus: Marshalls, Famous Footwear, Joann Fabrics & Crafts, Modells Sporting Goods, Pat's Hallmark, UPS Store, Toys "R" Us, restaurants, bakery.

Visit Millbrook, a charming town in Dutchess County and part of the scenic Hudson Valley. Millbrook is home to horse farms, a quaint village life and some of the best antique shopping in the region. When you visit Millbrook don't expect to find a national chain store . . . "Although you'll never see a Starbucks or a Home Depot on the corner of Church and Franklin, the family-owned businesses in Millbrook offer a wide variety of merchandise for your shopping enjoyment." Find special antiques and collectibles in the many antique stores of Millbrook; or browse in our bookstores, clothing stores, jewelry stores, food markets, gift boutiques, and much more.

Visit Ulster County in the mid-Hudson Valley. Ulster County offers many boutique stores in Woodstock, New Paltz, and Saugerties. Or visit department stores and retail shops at the large shopping malls in Kingston. If you're looking for specialty shops with accessory items, handcrafted jewelry, or even rustic furniture to decorate your home; you'll find it in Ulster County. Visit the Hudson Valley Mall, the only enclosed mall in Ulster County. The Hudson Valley Mall is home to Macy's, JCPenney, Sears, Target and over 80 mall shops; or relax with a good movie at the Regal Cinema's.

Columbia County located in the upper-Hudson Valley offers antique shops, fine art galleries, gifts, home furnishings, jewelry and an amazing array of fresh orchards and food marts, offering fresh apples, cider, oven-hot donuts and apple pies, luscious raspberries, sweet corn, peaches, and tomatoes right off the vine . . . you can even join the harvest and pick your own! Farmers markets abound at every turn. Or visit Hudson, one of the premier antiquing centers in the country. Hudson offers more than 65 shops lining Warren Street and its side roads.

Visit Hunter, Catskill, or one of the ski towns in Greene County. Shop at JC Penny or for discount shopping try Big Lots. Big Lots is the nation's largest broadline closeout retailer selling brand-name products, including consumables, seasonal items, furniture, housewares, toys, electronics, home décor, tools and gifts.

As the capital of New York, Albany County in the upper-Hudson Valley, delivers on capital shopping delights. Historic neighborhoods are filled with specialty shops and malls offering hundreds of shopping and dining options.

Among these are: Stuyvesant Plaza, reminiscent of the outdoor markets of long ago. Stuyvesant Plaza features more than 60 spots for shopping. Shop at whimsical boutiques to leading apparel stores like Coldwater Creek, Talbot’s and Chico’s. Albany also provides shopping centers and malls such as Colonie Center, offering anchor stores such as Barnes & Noble, Christmas Tree Shops, L.L. Bean, Macy's, Sears and more. Visit Crossgates Mall offering an impressive selection of retail stores for your shopping needs. After a day of shopping at Crossgates Mall, dine in one of the many restaurants followed by a movie at the Regal Cinema 18 Megaplex movie theaters.

Troy, in Rensselaer County, has become a popular destination. Whether you are coming to explore the area's history, visit one of the City's colleges or attend a cultural event, there is plenty to see and do in The Collar City. Farmers Markets abound in and around Rensselaer. "The Troy Waterfront Farmers Summer Market is complete with music, great food and activities to share with friends and family. It's an easy way to enjoy Troy's many shops, restaurants, historic and cultural sites. If you're visiting in the winter, not to worry. Troy Waterfront is a year-round market. Each year, from November through April, you can find us at the Uncle Sam Atrium in the heart of Troy’s downtown business district. Our winter location offers easy access to on-and off-street parking and the city’s many shops, restaurants and cultural sites. Folks come from all over the Capital Region to shop with 50+ local vendors and savor the tastes, sights and sounds at our indoor market - many stay for lunch and a walk around historic downtown Troy. We have a great time every Saturday (no matter what the weather outside).

"With 50 carefully selected dealers in room-sized settings and 16,000 square feet of showroom space, the Bournebrook Center serves as the anchor for the lively River Street Antique District in historic Troy, NY, the "walk around" city. Located within minutes of the NYS Thruway and Adirondack Northway, Bournebrook is convenient to dealers, decorators, designers and retail shoppers from throughout the U.S. and Canada who are looking for something far better than the ordinary. Surrounded by dozens of other antique shops, retail boutiques and many of the finest restaurants in the Capital District, Bournebrook is a destination that will keep you delighted for an entire day's worth of browsing and buying."

Brief History of Shopping Malls, Shopping Centers, and Factory Outlets
Northgate in Seattle, Washington was the first regional shopping center to officially be called a mall. Northgate opened on April 21, 1950 and was the first regional shopping center in the United States to be described as a mall, due to its double row of stores facing each other across a covered pedestrian walkway. Northgate was also the first mall to have public restrooms.

The evolution of shopping malls, factory outlets, shopping centers, shopping plazas . . . have evolved and grown for more than half a century. Today, many of these malls are far larger than many towns and cities in the world.

Today, in 2009, Asia is home to seven of the world's 10 largest malls . . . South China Mall, Dongguan, China opened in 2005. South China Mall's the gross leasable area is 7.1 million square feet. The space includes wind mills and theme parks, plus a replica of the Arc de Triomphe.

SM Mall of Asia opened in 2009 and is located in Pasay City, Philippines. The gross leasable area is: 4.2 million square feet. This mall includes the first Olympic-sized swimming pool and first IMAX theater in the Philippines. The mall is spread over four buildings and visitors can move throughout the mall on a 20-seat tram.

Mall of America opened in 1992 and is located in Bloomington, MN. The mall is 2.5 million sq. feet and has earned a national reputation for entertaining guests. From musical acts to celebrity book signing to fashion show, Mall of America is the Hollywood of the Midwest. Mall of America has been described as a city within a city. Along with an extensive range of retail, restaurants, and entertainment, there are many unique features in this mall that may be found in any American community. This mall offers education classes, fitness training and more.

Let's go back to a brief history of the Northgate Shopping Mall. "On April 21, 1950, the Northgate Shopping Mall opens at NE Northgate Way at 5th Avenue NE in Seattle. Planned by developers Rex Allison and Ben B. Ehrlichman (1895-1971) and designed by John Graham Jr. (1908-1991), it is the country's first regional shopping center defined as a "mall" (although there were at least three predecessor shopping centers). The stores face "a wide shopping walkway, probably to be known as the Mall or Plaza, in which no vehicles will be permitted" (The Seattle Times) . . .

"Northgate was the brainchild of Rex Allison, president of Bon Marché. Before World War II, he envisioned a suburban shopping center. The economic boom following Allied victory in 1945 allowed Allied Stores, the firm that owned Bon Marché, to involve developers Ben B. Ehrlichman and W. Walter Williams (1894-1983), who formed the Suburban Co. (later The Northgate Co.). They retained architect John H. Graham Jr. to design the project and announced their plans in February 1948. In 1949, Allied bought out Ehrlichman and Williams and appointed James B. Douglas (1909-2005) to run the project as president."

The above information about Northgate was sourced from David Wilma, August 02, 2001

Evolution of the Shopping Center
"The antecedents of the modern shopping center were the ancient agoras and medieval piazzas of European cities. The industrial revolution of the nineteenth century produced the department store but made cities crowded and dirty, and the desire to improve life by moving away from the city gave birth to the suburb and shopping mall . . .

1916 Chicago architect Arthur Aldis persuaded wealthy residents of Lake Forest, Illinois, and investors such as Cyrus H. McCormick, Jr., to form the Lake Forest Improvement Trust to build Market Square, an integrated shopping complex of 28 stores, 12 office units, 30 apartments, gymnasium, clubhouse and landscaping. According to Richard Longstreth, "The automobile was a central factor in this planning, since most Lake Foresters had cars at an early date. Market Square was perhaps the first business district to be laid out specifically to accommodate motor vehicles." (p. 152) The National Register of Historic Places has listed Market Square as the first planned shopping district in the United States.

1922 J. C. Nichols created Country Club Plaza on the outskirts of Kansas City, Missouri, as an automobile-centered plaza built according to a unified plan rather than as a random group of stores, owned and operated by a single entity who leased space to tenants. Nichols would make the term shopping center popular . . .

. . . 1928 Don M. Casto opened Grandview Avenue Shopping Center in Columbus, Ohio, with 4 supermarkets (Piggly-Wiggly, A&P, Kroger, Polumbos) and 20 other stores and parking for 400 cars. Grandview became a model for the auto-accessible strip mall. In New Jersey, Radburn was built as a planned city with parks and walkways and decentralized shopping areas.

1929 Westwood Village opened as a shopping center for the "second Hollywood" of Westwood built on the site of the 3300-acre Rancho San Jose de Buenos Aires between Beverly Hills and Santa Monica, purchased in 1919 by department store owner Arthur Letts (Broadway, Bullocks), and developed by his son-in-law Harold Janss as a housing tract after 1922, including the sale of 384 acres to UCLA in 1926 for a university campus that opened 1929, and a shopping center of 34 stores in 1929 that grew to 452 stores by 1939.

1930 Strawbridge & Clothier department store in Philadelphia built a branch store at Suburban Square in Ardmore on the Main Line. In many cities, department stores became the leading force in building suburban shopping centers.

1931 The Highland Park Shopping Village designed by Hugh Prather in Dallas was a Mediterranean-style shopping center with storefronts facing an inner parking lot.

1935 Greenbelt, Maryland, was built by the New Deal as a planned community including stores, but not organized as a shopping center.

1938 - Silver Spring Shopping Center in Silver Spring, MD, was an early neighborhood center of 19 stores anchored by a grocery store and the Silver Theatre, with an off-street parking lot, designed by John Eberson.

1939 The Wisstein Brothers and Surval project opened on South Broadway in Los Angeles, a neighborhood center that appealed to chain stores such as the drugstore (Owl, Sontag, Thrifty) and the supermarket (Von's, Ralphs) and the variety store (Kress, Woolworth, Newberry) seeking to build away from urban congestion on well-travelled streets accessible by automobile, each center providing a small parking lot for 100-300 cars.

1943 Linda Vista Shopping Center in San Diego was built by the Department of Treasury for the government housing project that served Reuben Fleet's Consolidated Aircraft workers in World War II, and it was one of the first shopping centers designed as a unique space, separate from the streets and the houses, using a hollow square design for 82,000 sq. ft. on a block of land with landscaped green and pedestrian walks, but limited parking space for only 216 cars. Similar shopping centers would be developed in World War II for defense housing projects, such as Westchester in Los Angeles and Willow Run in Detroit.

. . .1949 Don M. Casto opened the Town & Country in the suburb of Whitehall east of Columbus. "Nighttime shopping was inaugurated at Town & Country Shopping Center in Columbus, Ohio, when developer Don Casto hired Grandma Carver (a woman who dived from a 90-foot perch into a 4-foot pool of flaming water), to perform her act in the lighted parking lot, bringing shopping center promotion to a new level." (ICSC 2000)

1950 Northgate opened near Seattle on April 21, the first regional shopping center defined as a mall. Anchored by a Bon Marche department store, it provided 800,000 sq. ft. for stores arranged in a linear pattern along a 44-foot wide pedestrian walkway, or "mall" that would become the center spine of all future regional shopping centers. The word came from the British game of pall-mall, or "ball and mallett" combining elements of croquet and golf, played since the 1500s on a wide fairway green.

1950 The drive-in grew in popularity as cars and suburbs shifted population away from center cities; the Campus Drive-In near San Diego State University featured a 50-foot-high neon majorette.

1951 Valley Plaza opened as the first shopping center designed to be built near major freeways, anchored by a Sears store, located in the rapidly growing suburbs of the San Fernando Valley north of Los Angeles.

1952 Lakewood Center opened 7 miles north of Long Beach near a Douglas Aircraft factory as one of the largest shopping malls in Southern California, with 100 stores and parking for 12,000 cars on 154 acres, anchored by a 350,000 sq. ft. May Co. department store with 2 supermarkets at each end of the linear center. In the next 8 years, 13 other regional malls would be built in the Los Angeles area.

1953 Cherry Creek Shopping Center in Denver opened, planned by architect Temple Buell since 1946, under construction since 1950, anchored by Denver Dry Goods on one side of First Avenue and in 1954 by Buell's metal-trimmed Sears Roebuck store on the other side of First Avenue.

1954 Austrian-born Victor Gruen designed Northland, near Detroit, with 110 stores in 1,192,000 sq. ft. on 2 levels, in a cluster arrangement surrounded by parking lot, modeled on the agora, the town squares of ancient Greece. "Gruen, a refugee who had fled the Nazis and arrived in New York in 1938 with $8 in his pocket and little more than his T-square in his luggage, had worked on some of those early open-air shopping centers. Then Detroit's J. L. Hudson department store chain commissioned him to design a center 8 miles away from its flagship downtown store to take advantage of the recent suburban developments spawned by the city's postwar expressways. In 1954, when it opened, the Northland Center was the world's largest shopping mall." (US News 12/27/99)

1956 Victor Gruen's 95-acre two-level Southdale Center Mall opened Oct. 8 in Edina, MN, near Minneapolis, the first fully enclosed shopping center, with a constant climate-controlled temperature of 72 degrees, inspired by the design of the Galleria Vittoria Emanuele designed and built by architect Giuseppe Mengoni 1865-77 in Milan, Italy. In Maryland, James Rouse opened in October the Mondawmin Mall west of Baltimore.

1957 International Council of Shopping Centers was founded with a membership of 36. The first chairman of the ICSC Board was Leonard L. Farber who had developed suburban strip centers from his New York company headquarters. Albert Sussman was elected the ICSC president 1958-86 . . .

. . . 1962 - Victor Gruen designed the downtown Midtown Plaza for Rochester, NY, opened April 1962, on 7 acres with 2 department stores, McCurdy's and Forman's, at a cost $35 million, "the single largest private investment in America's downtown retailing since World War II " (Hardwick p. 201) Gruen's Randhurst Shopping Center in Mount Prospect near Chicago also opened this year, considered at that time the world's largest shopping center with 1 million sq ft and 3 department stores under a giant dome . . .

. . . 1967 Ernest W. Hahn opened his first regional shopping center, La Cumbre Plaza in Santa Barbara, California. In Maryland, the Rouse Company built the planned community of Columbia and made it the headquarters of the company. The Rouse Company became one of the largest mall builders in the East, as the Ernest Hahn Company would become in the West .

. . . 1972 After 20 years of steadily expanding construction, the United States had a total of 13,174 shopping centers.

1973 The Hahn Co. built the Parkway Plaza shopping center in El Cajon that included a three-screen United Artists theater (closed in 1989).

1974 Westminster Mall opened south of Los Angeles, the last regional mall built with a huge central court.

1975 Fox Hills Mall opened in Los Angeles, the first 3-level mall in Calfornia. Westwood Mall opened near Houston. . .

. . . 1977 - Roy Ramond founded Victoria's Secret lingerie store in San Francisco, and after being sold in 1982 to The Limited corporation, expanded rapidly into shopping centers, with 1000 stores by 2005. . .

. . . 1990 The decade of the 1980s saw the construction of more than 16,000 shopping centers. A Gallup poll showed Americans averaged four trips to a regional or neighborhood mall per month.

1992 Sara Donovan, founder of WalkSport America, began promoting "mall walking," later wrote book "Mall Walking Madness" in 2002.

1993 Shaheen Sadeghi built The Lab in Costa Mesa CA as an "anti-mall" from a former canning factory; and he built The Camp in 2002 in Costa Mesa for outdoor shoppers with five buildings and landscaping simulating a desert and meadow and forest, called "a shopping playground."

1994 The Westfield Company of Australia purchased CenterMark for $1 billion, giving it ownership of 19 regional malls, adding to its American properties that included the purchase of Macy's shopping centers in 1986 for $363 million. In 1998 Westfield purchased TrizecHahn to become the largest owner of regional malls in California, Maryland, and Connecticut.

1995 The first megaplex theater (defined as 14 screens or more) opened in May in Dallas with a 24-screen AMC palace; in November, Edwards opened a 21-screen megaplex at Irvine Spectrum Center, at a cost of $27-million for 158,000 square feet with 6,400 seats and a 3D IMAX.

1996 AMC opened the largest megaplex in the nation, a 30-screen, 5,700 seat theater in Ontario CA. "At the 200-store Ontario Mills Mall, a new concept called "interactive shoppertainment" specifically targets parents, dating couples, families and kids. The lure; do everything from ogling bobcats and lizards at an on-site museum to skiing in virtual reality video game." (Sun-Times 3/21/99)

1997 Pacific Theatres opened a $15 million, 15-screen multiplex theater near Horton Plaza in the Gaslamp Quarter of San Diego. Gene Kemp completed the renovation of the Fashion Valley mall in San Diego, originally built in 1969 by Ernest Hahn, increasing its size to 1,700,000 sq. ft. and 205 stores, adding 5 parking structures to accommodate 8000 cars.

2000 Factory outlet centers became one of the fastest-growing segments of the shopping center industry in the 1990s. Anderson-Little in 1936 began the first factory outlet store for its men's clothing overstock . . . By 1987 there were 108 factory outlet malls, by 1999 there were 278 outlet centers.

2005 According to Emil Pocock, the largest shopping center in the world was the Golden Resources Shopping Mall in Beijing, China, with 7,300,000 square feet total area. The largest mall in North America was West Edmonton Mall in Alberta, Canada, with 5,500,000 sq. ft. and 20,000 parking spaces. The largest shopping mall in the United States was Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, with 4,200,000 sq. ft., parking for 12,500 cars, and a seven-acre amusement park, nightclubs, restaurants.

2006 - Otay Ranch Town Center will open in October on 85 acres off Olympic Parkway in the boomtown of Chula Vista. As a "lifestyle mall," it will combine some aspects of a regional mall with an old-fashioned town square. In its first phase, it will have 80 specialty stores, mostly upscale; possibly a Nordstrom department store; and several restaurants, including P.F. Chang's China Bistro and The Cheesecake Factory. In its second phase in 2008, it will add an additional 20 specialty stores and possibly another upper-end department store . . . The developer is Chicago-based General Growth Properties, who have calculated that an estimated 70,000 people cross the border each day, and 63 percent of them come to shop.

The above timeline history is sourced from Schoenherr, Steven E. Evolution of the Shopping Center [Feb. 17, 2006]