In Nashville, Elvis Presley recorded his first songs early that year.
The Hudson Motor Car Co. merged with Nash-Kelvinator Corp. to form the American Motors Corp., at the time the largest corporate merger in U.S. history.
A promising power hitter named Hank Aaron made his Major League debut with the Milwaukee Braves.
RCA manufactured the first color TV set. It came with a 12 ½-inch screen and a $1,000 price tag.
In March that year, the first shopping mall opened in Southfield, Mich.
In Yonkers, developer Sol Atlas had a similar vision for postwar American shoppers. On April 28, 1954, Atlas, with financial backing from Scarsdale businessman Leonard Marx Sr., opened the Cross County Shopping Center. The first large-scale open-air shopping center in Westchester and first mall-type venue in New York, Atlas’s $30 million development was considered one of the most ambitious commercial projects of its kind in the nation.
Cross County opened with about 30 retail stores and one restaurant, Horn & Hardart, which seated 500 diners. It soon expanded to include more than a dozen buildings and nearly 100 stores anchored by Gimbels and Wanamaker’s.
Marx, the pioneering developer’s initial financial backer, in 1977 acquired the approximately 70-acre property with Charles Benenson on behalf of a strategic partnership between Merchants’ National Properties Inc. and Benenson Capital Partners L.L.C. The two New York City-based real estate investment, development and management companies formed Brooks Shopping Centers.
The enduring shopping center was rejuvenated in recent years by a $250 million renovation and expansion project completed in 2011. Two of its tenants since the late 1950s, Suzette’s Lingerie and Sterling Optical, are among its current mix of 70 national and international retailers. Its 50s-era department store anchors have been succeeded by Macy’s, Sears, Super Stop & Shop and Multiplex Cinemas.
Construction began this year at Cross County on Hyatt Place Yonkers, a 155-room hotel in an eight-story tower at the center of the shopping center that was formerly used as a hospital and office building. The approximately $25 million development of Manhattan-based Friend Development Group L.L.C. and Lodge Works Partners L.P. of Wichita, Kansas, is expected to be completed in 2015.
“Throughout the last six decades Cross County has enjoyed a steady growth in its business and an increase in daily shoppers,” James Stifel, executive vice president for Brooks Shopping Centers and chief investment officer for Benenson Capital Partners, said in a prepared statement. “The success of Cross County is a testimony to its strategic location and the vision of its founders.”
Building by the numbers
Construction of the Cross County Shopping Center in Yonkers began in 1952 and was completed in 1954. Here is what went into the development, according to its current management:
• 38,000 cubic yards of concrete, enough for a 15-mile-long highway.
• 1 million cubic yards of fill.
• 50,000 cubic yards of rock excavated.
• 75 miles of wood and steel pilings.
• 12 miles of pipes.
• 5.3 million bricks.
• Blueprints weighed 30 tons.
• 2,000 tons of reinforcing steel.
• 5,300 tons of structural steel.
• 30,000 trees and shrubs planted for landscape.
• More than 2 million man hours of labor.
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