Fulton Mall (Fresno, California)

Fresno, California’s Fulton Mall, designed by Garrett Eckbo, arguably the leading theoretician and practitioner of 20th-century modernist landscape architecture, was completed in 1964. The Mall was originally the centerpiece of an effort to maintain downtown Fresno as the region’s retail center. Changes in planning policies from centralization to decentralization created an orgy of urban sprawl dooming that effort. However, thanks to the genius of Eckbo’s design, Fresno was left with an urban park.

Since 2002 the Fulton Mall has been threatened with destruction by a determined minority that is convinced that turning it back into a street will create a thriving retail center. The controversy over the Mall has reached a point of crisis: a nomination of Fulton Mall to the National Register of Historic Places is on the agenda of California’s State Historical Resources Commission on July 25.

tclf.org/content/fulton-mall-fresno-ca