Assembly Square Cinemas
35 Middlesex Avenue,
Somerville,
MA
02145
35 Middlesex Avenue,
Somerville,
MA
02145
4 people
favorited this theater
Sack Theatres opened the Assembly Square Cinemas with eight screens on June 12, 1981. According to Alan Friedberg, then president of Sack Theatres it was the first time that so many movie theatres were opened on the same day at a single location in Massachusetts.
The cinemas were next door to, but separate from, the Assembly Square shopping mall, which also opened in 1981. The mall featured Jordan Marsh and K-Mart as its anchor stores, and at the time was considered an inventive recycling of a former Ford Motor Company assembly plant.
The opening of Assembly Square dealt a fatal blow to the nearby Broadway Theatre in Somerville, which closed in the spring of 1982.
On December 9, 1983, Sack Theatres added four more screens to Assembly Square. This made it the largest multi-screen complex in New England at the time.
When Macy’s closed the former Jordan Marsh store in 1997, the Assembly Square Mall fell on hard times; soon afterwards, every store except K-Mart had closed. Loews Theatres, which inherited this theatre from Sack Theatres in 1988, went bankrupt in 2001.
The Assembly Square Cinemas nevertheless survived long enough to become part of the AMC chain, after AMC took over Loews Theatres in January 2006. The cinemas finally closed on the evening of Monday, January 15, 2007 (Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday). The theatre’s landlord has not announced future plans for the property, and it was demolished in August 2014.
Contributed by
Ron Newman
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Recent comments (view all 37 comments)
And still empty now. I was over there today and it looks the same except the glassed in front was covered in plywood.
I wonder how the roof’s holding up? It was raining hard all day today.
A.K.A.Loews Assembly Square?
Sack, then USACinemas, then Loews. But the ads just called it ‘Somerville’.
Thanks Ron.
AMC will build a new 12-screen theatre in Assembly Square, according to today’s Boston Globe. Construction will start this year, and it may open by fall 2013.
June 12th, 1981 grand opening ad uploaded here.
To my amazement, this is STILL sitting empty more than six years after it closed. I’ve heard of no development plans for this property yet. (It is not owned by Federal Realty, who are doing extensive redevelopment of other Assembly Square property.)
The replacement for this theatre, the new AMC Assembly Row 12, officially opened today in Somerville according to AMC. They are showing movies listed starting today. Considering that they’re about six months from finishing everything over there, i’m surprised it has already opened – they don’t even officially list an address for the theater yet…
Demolition of this theatre finally started this week, over 7 ½ years after it closed. You can see photos of the demolition here:
http://thesomervillenewsweekly.wordpress.com/2014/08/19/demolition-day-for-the-old-assembly-square-theater/
It was first known as “Assembly Square 1-8” when Sack opened its doors on June 12, 1981. It was renamed “Assembly Square Cinema” for the heck of it after its expansion to 12 on December 9, 1983.
Sack operated the Assembly Square until January 12, 1986, when it was taken over by USA Cinemas. Finally on March 26, 1989, Loews took over the Assembly Square from USA Cinemas. At the time, the theater was renamed “Loews Somerville at Assembly Square”.
Both Loews and the later Loews Cineplex operated the theater for the longest period of time (with the exception of its short-lived Sony Theatres operation from December 1994-October 1996) until Loews went defunct in January 2006 by AMC, and at the time, the theater changed its name to “AMC Loews Assembly Square”, where it remain as its final theater name until closure on January 15, 2007