The Rouse Company, founded by James W. Rouse in 1939, was a publicly held shopping mall and community developer from 1956 until 2004, when General Growth Properties Inc. purchased the company.
The Rouse Company built some of the first enclosed shopping malls, and it pioneered the development of festival marketplaces, such as Jacksonville Landing in Jacksonville, Faneuil Hall in Boston, South Street Seaport in New York City, Harborplace in Baltimore, and Bayside Marketplace in Miami. They also developed The Shops at National Place in downtown Washington, D.C. that opened in 1984-85.
The company has also been credited as the pioneer of the first successful food court in an enclosed shopping mall, when the second-floor food court at the Paramus Park shopping mall in New Jersey opened for business in March 1974. It followed an unsuccessful attempt at the Plymouth Meeting Mall in 1971, which reportedly failed because it was "deemed too small and insufficiently varied."
Its community projects include the Village of Cross Keys in Baltimore and the planned cities of Columbia, Maryland (where it was headquartered), Bridgeland Community, Texas, and Summerlin, Nevada. The Rouse Company was also an investor in the planned community of The Woodlands, Texas.
In 1996, The Howard Hughes Corporation, which had extensive property and other business interests, became a subsidiary. On November 12, 2004, the Rouse Company was sold to Chicago-based General Growth Properties Inc., another shopping mall developer.[1]