Westgate: Space and Culture

Beneath reports of Westgate Mall’s financial struggles and aging appearance lies a deeper source of meaning for the community. Although not all of Victor Gruen’s suburban mall ideals materialized at Westgate, the mall’s transformation reflects some of his vision for malls as vibrant community meeting places. Gruen’s early retail designs featured modest exteriors for suburban shopping centres.[1] Westgate, with its simple, no-frills facade, followed this approach. Additionally, Gruen promoted covered walkways and controlled traffic to improve the shopping experience. These features were highlighted in Westgate’s positive press at its opening.[2] Most importantly, continuing this pattern, Westgate Mall captured Gruen’s vision for a space beyond commerce. Over the course of seventy years, Westgate offered post office services, healthcare clinics, and the Flamingo Room for private events, echoing Gruen’s call for civic and club amenities.[3] In this way, Westgate resembled a community centre more than just a shopping centre.   

This connection to Gruen’s vision is rooted in his work. In February 1943, Gruen and his second wife, Elise Krummeck, presented a shopping centre plan commissioned by Architectural Forum, an American publication, crystallizing their philosophy.[4] The plan described an ideal centre: situated between major roadways, it offered expansive parking.[5] Facilities would include recreational spaces, such as restaurants, milk bars, and music, along with civic services, such as post offices and club rooms, and cultural venues, such as theatres and concert spaces. Shops would be divided by glass walls, allowing easy movement throughout the mall. As Gruen and Krummeck explained, such a space “should serve an entire community... Such a shopping centre would be the one important meeting place of the community, and would be in some measure comparable to the market place or main square of the older cities.”[6] With all of these features considered together, the historic life of Westgate Mall does not seem so far from the community centre Gruen imagined. 

Perhaps these central tenets, aimed at serving and connecting a growing community, fostered the enduring love Westgate Mall would come to receive. To understand its communal significance, it is important to consider how, by the late 1970s, the West End and Carlington neighbourhoods that Westgate called home had also changed: no longer isolated postwar suburbs, but evolving urban communities.[7] Prices had risen beyond the $1.50 restaurant meal of 1955. Bayshore Mall’s 1973 opening brought more competition to Ottawa’s original shopping centre, which was then seen as tacky and unappealing. Despite changing conditions and sweeping civic, economic, and social shifts, a quiet, determined local affection for Westgate endured.   

Even as the mall was enclosed during the 1978 renovation aimed at revitalizing it, tenants, merchants, and business owners kept their regular customers.[8] After building a reputation for customer service, owner-operated businesses, and community-based clientele, many owners added that Westgate Mall's look hadn’t hurt their business. Some tenants welcomed the renovation; others stressed the community connections Westgate forged. Echoing this perspective, a 1978 Ottawa Citizen article reported on renovation plans. Among the merchants mentioned were Mollie Tradburks (of Anne-Lee women’s clothing), Ted Wolfe (of a shoe store), and Phyllis Throop (of Throop Pharmacy), all of whom credited the community members who became loyal Westgate patrons and friends.[9]

In 1990, the Ottawa Citizen again captured a similar sentiment.[10] While discussing the expansion project, then-mall manager Sherri McEwen highlighted Westgate’s long-standing relationships with many businesses, noting that the mall not only served its regular clientele but also attracted devoted shoppers from across the city. Observing the shopping patterns, author Sue Ronald noted that local customers “come from a three-mile radius surrounding the mall.”[11] Echoing this, McEwen affirmed, “A lot of real faithful and loyal customers come here.”[12]  

Over the years, Westgate Mall became a key hub for local connections and social activity. Seniors and other visitors gathered at the site to meet others, socialize, and combat isolation.[13] From its expanded services in 1955 to its loyal customers in the late 1970s and beyond, Westgate Mall evolved from a postwar suburban commercial space to a central community hub. Its contribution to social infrastructure merits recognition, especially as traditional malls decline.

[1] Joseph Malherek, “Victor Gruen’s Retail Therapy: Exiled Jewish Communities and the Invention of American Shopping Malls as a Postwar Ideal,” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 61 (2016): 230-231, https://doi.org/10.1093/leobaeck/ybw001. 

[2] James Powell, “Temples of Commerce,” The Historical Society of Ottawa, accessed October 17, 2025. https://www.historicalsocietyottawa.ca/publications/ottawa-stories/important-public-and-private-buildings-in-the-city/temples-of-commerce. 

[3] Malherek, “Victor Gruen’s Retail Therapy: Exiled Jewish Communities and the Invention of American Shopping Malls as a Postwar Ideal,” 230.

[4] Malherek, “Victor Gruen’s Retail Therapy: Exiled Jewish Communities and the Invention of American Shopping Malls as a Postwar Ideal,” 231.

[5] Timothy Mennel, “Victor Gruen and the Construction of Cold War Utopias,” Journal of Planning History 3, no. 2 (2004): 118-120, https://doi.org/10.1177/1538513204264755. 

[6] Mennel, “Victor Gruen and the Construction of Cold War Utopias,” 119.

[7] Gordon Pitts, “City’s first shopping centre to shed ‘tacky’ image,” The Ottawa Citizen (Ottawa, ON), June 10, 1978, ProQuest Historical Newspapers. 

[8] Pitts, “City’s first shopping centre to shed ‘tacky’ image,” ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

[9] Pitts, “City’s first shopping centre to shed ‘tacky’ image,” ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

[10] Sue Ronald, “Westgate Mall,” The Ottawa Citizen (Ottawa, ON), September 18, 1990, ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

[11] Ronald, “Westgate Mall,” ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

[12] Ronald, “Westgate Mall,” ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

[13] Powell, “Temples of Commerce,” https://www.historicalsocietyottawa.ca/publications/ottawa-stories/important-public-and-private-buildings-in-the-city/temples-of-commerce.