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1949: The shopping centers

Bergfeld Center on the old fairground in 1949, then a mall on South Broadway in 1975.

Trade and industry· 1949–1975

Broadway Square Mall
What the sources put on the map by 1975, over today’s streets.Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors.

The record

  1. 1876 to 1930s

    The East Texas District Fair Association acquires a 75-acre site south of First Street between Broadway, Donnybrook and Troup Highway in 1876. Rudolph Bergfeld buys the land in 1904, and his family subdivides it in the 1920s and 1930s.1

  2. After World War I

    Air Corps veteran O.C. Palmer keeps a small biplane in South Tyler, east of Broadway about where Bergfeld Square is now, and takes passengers up for short flights.2

  3. Late 1940s

    Bergfeld Square goes up on the old fairground, and Bergfeld Center opens in 1949. The city’s National Register documentation calls Bergfeld Square ‘Tyler’s first suburban shopping center’ in one passage and Bergfeld Center ‘one of Tyler’s first suburban shopping centers’ in another.32

  4. April 1, 1975

    Broadway Square Mall opens on South Broadway, when that part of town is considered ‘out in the country’.3

A picture

Bergfeld Shopping Center, Tyler, Texas
Bergfeld Shopping Center, drawn from the air on a linen postcard published by East Texas Engraving Co. of Tyler. The center opened in 1949.Boston Public Library, Tichnor Brothers Collection, CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/)The originalBoston Public Library

Notes

  1. National Register Multiple Property Documentation Form, Historic and Architectural Resources of Tyler, Texas (2001) (atlas.thc.texas.gov). Research notes

  2. National Register Multiple Property Documentation Form, Historic and Architectural Resources of Tyler, Texas (2001) (atlas.thc.texas.gov). Existing fact bergfeld-center-1949 (and its card) calls Bergfeld Center Tyler's first shopping center outside downtown; this document hedges once ('one of'). Consider softening the card or citing the Tyler Morning Telegraph wording explicitly. Research notes

  3. Tyler Morning Telegraph, 2014-09-28: Broadway Square Mall Construction in 70s Rivaled Building a Town (tylerpaper.com); Simon: Broadway Square Mall (simon.com). Attributed: the city's 2000 historic-resources survey calls it both Tyler's 'first' and 'one of the first' suburban shopping centers; say 'the city's survey calls it the first' or 'one of the first'. Research notes

About this plate

  • Bergfeld Center has no pin. OpenStreetMap does not name it, and the sources give an area, not a building we could check against the map.
  • Broadway Square Mall: a filled pin marks the place the sources tie the event to. 32.29969° N, 95.30281° W, from OpenStreetMap way/480933742.
  • The faint linework is today’s map, from OpenStreetMap. How the map is made.