History
- 1926: The namesake of the site, a Ford Motor Company car assembly plant, opens.
- March 1958: Ford closes the assembly plant due to the high costs of operating the undersized, outdated facility during a national economic recession. The last car built here was the Edsel.
- 1980: Assembly Square Mall opens. The mall is the latest reuse of the original Ford Motor factory. Prior to becoming a mall, the building served as a supermarket distribution center.
- March 2005: Federal Realty Investment Trust purchases Assembly Square and an adjacent 220,000-square-foot (20,000 m2) retail/industrial complex.
- August 2005: The SAFETEA-LU federal transportation funding bill, which includes $25 million earmark in federal transportation funding for a new Assembly Square station on the MBTA's Orange Line, is signed into law.
- 2005/2006: The new Assembly Square Marketplace opens with retailers including Christmas Tree Shops; A.C. Moore; Sports Authority; Staples; Kmart; TJ Maxx and Bed, Bath & Beyond.
- April 2006: IKEA and Federal Realty announce agreement in principle on land swap and Federal Realty unveils preliminary master plan for Assembly Square.
- October 2006: Federal Realty, IKEA and Mystic View Task Force announce landmark accord including Federal Realty and IKEA’s $15 million contribution to a new Orange Line station and a long-term vision for Assembly Square with five million square feet of retail, residential, office, research and development space.
- April 30, 2012: Groundbreaking day for the $1.6 billion redevelopment of Assembly Square, “widely seen as the biggest example of "transit-oriented development" now underway on the East Coast.”
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Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of reform is always identical; it is the comparison of the idea with the fact. Our modes of living are not agreeable to our imagination. We suspect they are unworthy. We arraign our daily employments.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The history of any nation follows an undulatory course. In the trough of the wave we find more or less complete anarchy; but the crest is not more or less complete Utopia, but only, at best, a tolerably humane, partially free and fairly just society that invariably carries within itself the seeds of its own decadence.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“The custard is setting; meanwhile
I not only have my own history to worry about
But am forced to fret over insufficient details related to large
Unfinished concepts that can never bring themselves to the point
Of being, with or without my help, if any were forthcoming.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)