While 1970 was not the first year that the Monroeville mall opened, but it was the first year the original mall can reasonably be treated as fully realized. The enclosed mall was dedicated on May 13, 1969, but one of the original anchors, Joseph Horne Co., did not begin business until August 28, 1969. A Historic Pittsburgh image then describes the mall in 1970 as being “after recently being completed,” which makes 1970 the first full year of the completed original scheme in operation.
This full two-level enclosed mall, with its three-anchor store arrangement, the lower-level G.C. Murphy, the landscaped and fountain-filled common areas, and the attached Annex Shops was a retail game changer. A retail-history compilation puts the enclosed mall at about 1,014,800 leasable square feet, with another 110,200 square feet in the Annex Shops, for a total original complex of over 1.1 million square feet. Historic Pittsburgh’s Monroeville Historical Society record says the new mall had capacity for over 100 tenants and parking for 6,500 cars; another source gives 8,000 autos, so the parking figure should be treated as a source discrepancy rather than a settled number.
