Crowds gathered around the "Clock of Nations" at Midtown Plaza, ca. 1962

Gruen's intention when creating this shopping center was to provide a pedestrian-friendly town square for Rochester. He incorporated art (such as the clock), benches, fountains, a four hundred seat auditorium, and a sidewalk café into his design to encourage the type of social mingling he considered essential to urban life. Midtown attracted international attention when it opened and won several design awards.