Tysons Corner Center

Tysons Corner Center is a large shopping mall in the unincorporated area of Tysons in Fairfax County, Virginia, United States (between McLean and Vienna, Virginia). It opened to the public in 1968, becoming one of the first fully enclosed, climate-controlled shopping malls in the Washington metropolitan area. The mall's anchor department stores are Macy's, Nordstrom, and Bloomingdale's. The mall also features prominent specialty retailers including Everlane, Fabletics, Untuckit, Oak + Fort, Intimissimi, Aesop, and Warby Parker.

Tysons Corner Center is the largest mall in the Baltimore-Washington area, and the 8th largest in the United States. The mall is located 12.5 miles (20.1 km) from the central business district of Washington D.C., and neighbors a second mall, Tysons Galleria, across Chain Bridge Road. To distinguish the two, some people refer to Tysons Corner Center as "Tysons I," and Tysons Galleria as "Tysons II."

Tysons Corner Center was one of the first super-regional malls in the country, drawing customers from a multi-state area. The mall was built as a follow-on partnership by Isadore Gudelsky and Theodore Lerner's Wheaton Plaza which opened in 1960. On May 31, 1962, the $20 million project was awarded to Lerner-Gudelsky by a 4–2 vote against James Rouse's Rouse Company with a controversial vote by William H Moss, a County supervisor who also worked for Gudelsky's District Title Insurance Company.

The 1.2 million square feet (110,000 m²) one-story mall opened on July 25, 1968, with just 35 of its 100 stores open and just two of its three department store anchors, Hecht's and Woodward & Lothrop. The third anchor department store, Lansburgh's, did not open until a year later, on October 19, 1969, due to a lawsuit involving an exchange of its lease for favorable zoning. The finished mall contained 100 specialty stores, including Jelleff's and discount chain Woolworth's, which operated a store in the mall until the entire chain went under in 1997.

Lansburgh's closed in 1973, when City Stores shuttered the entire chain. They rebranded the building as another of their stores, Lit Brothers, from 1973 to 1975. The building was then renovated as the first full-line branch of Bloomingdale's outside of New York City, reopening on September 9, 1976.

The mall was originally designed around five themed "courts": the Umbrella Court in front of Lansburgh's, the Fashion Court, the Fountain Court in front of Hechts, the Aviary Court and the Clock Court located near Woodward & Lothrop. Some of the few remaining pieces of the original infrastructure of the 1968 mall are the escalators that serve the second and third floor of Bloomingdale's (the original Lansburgh's escalators), and the original passenger and freight elevators from Woodward & Lothrop/JCPenney. Both are still in operation, however they are located in the back hallways and used as service elevators.

In 1988, the mall was expanded to add a second floor, at which time Lord & Taylor and Nordstrom opened; this was the first Nordstrom east of the Mississippi River. In 1995, Woodward & Lothrop closed and was converted to JCPenney, which closed 10 years later in 2005. The anchor store building was gutted and expanded and converted into two additional levels of mall space, anchored by a 16-screen AMC multiplex movie theater, Barnes & Noble, and Old Navy.

Today, the mall has 2.1 million square feet (195,000 m²) of retail space on three levels, 16 movie screens, two food courts and nearly 300 stores. From its opening until the 1990s, the mall contained a wide and diverse retail mix. Hot Shoppes cafeteria also occupied space in the mall until 1998. These types of stores shared space with higher-end tenants such as Liz Claiborne and A/X Armani Exchange.