In 1900, Burdick Street was a busy commercial corridor where streetcars carried workers and shoppers past grocers, butchers, dress shops, restaurants, saloons, banks, cigar stores, City Hall, and the post office, while horses pulling buggies crowded the brick streets and new concrete sidewalks filled with people and signs ran beside two- to four-story buildings with shops below and living space or offices above. By 1932, electric signals installed in 1926 controlled automobile traffic, the streetcars were gone, movie theaters and medical offices had replaced grocers, butchers, and saloons, the eight-story Kalamazoo building and ten-story Hanselman building housed professional offices, and although City Hall had moved to South Street, the post office and central fire station still faced Burdick Street. In 1959, two-way automobile traffic gave way to the nation's first permanent downtown pedestrian mall, designed by Victor Groen as part of an auto-free urban core intended to encourage business to remain in the city, and the mall sparked new interest downtown with remodeled storefronts, open green spaces, and new shoppers. By 1988, after years of slow decline, the two southern blocks of the pedestrian mall had reopened to one lane of traffic, with wide brick sidewalks for strolling, sitting, and dining, while restaurants, banks, and specialty shops lined the street, renovated living spaces occupied the upper floors, and the Kalamazoo Mall stood at the heart of a revitalized downtown filled with shopping, culture, and commerce.