Ridgeway Shopping Center

Ridgeway Shopping Center is a 365,411 sq ft (33, 947.8 m2) shopping center in Stamford, Connecticut, now classifying as a power center but when first opened in 1947, the first department store-anchored suburban shopping center in the Eastern United States. Stamford designer and architect Alfons Bach planned the initial section of the center in 1946, which opened on March 26, 1947, with 110,000 sq ft (10, 000 m2) of retail space on a 20,000-square-foot (1, 900 m2) parcel. Initial tenants included W.J. Sloan Home Furnishings (October 1948), Pennsylvania Drug (May 1949), Deena's, The Lurie Company, Chizzini and a Slenderella Figure Salon. In 1951, Bach added a three-story office tower and a Sears department store. A movie theater was added the same year. A six-story office building was added in 1956. In 1958, in a third expansion of the center, Gimbel Bros. opened a branch of Saks-34th, which briefly formed a small four-store chain, positioned as an upper-middle-market, yet more value-conscious sibling of Saks Fifth Avenue. Its addition to the center made Ridgeway the largest retail center in Connecticut. By 1960, when the center was sold for $5 million, it had 367,000 sq ft (34, 100 m2) of gross leasable area and parking for 1,000 cars. When Gimbel Bros. closed the New York City Saks 34th Street flagship store in July 1965, the three Saks-34th branches including Stamford were convert

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