50 Facts For The Burlington Mall's 50th Anniversary Year (2024)

The Burlington Mall turns 50 in 2018. Here are 50 facts about the region's original shopping destination.

Posted Tue, Jan 2, 2018 at 3:09 pm ET|Updated Tue, Jan 2, 2018 at 6:23 pm ET

1. Most of the land the mall was built on was known as "the sand pits" by local residents. It was the location for Acme Sand & Gravel.
2. Local teenagers were known to skinny dip in the pools of the sand pits until snapping turtles took up residence.
3. Baltimore developer Joseph Meyerhoff bought the Acme property in the mid-1960s. Meyerhoff saw an area with a growing population and few retail options.
4. Meyerhoff's company had a big vision for the project. "Burlington Mall was designed to be the most beautiful shopping place in New England," J.H. Pearlstone, a vice president at Meyerhoff, said. "In our 19 years in the development of shopping centers, we have learned a great deal about the planning and operation of centers this size and we have endowed Burlington with the total benefit of that experience."
5. Part of the mall was built on land owned by Vesili Matto, an Albanian immigrant and local produce farmer.
6. Matto's original, 100-year lease to the developers expires in 2065, at which time the remaining Matto family members will sell the land to the current mall owners.
7. According to Wikipedia, the Burlington Mall was developed by Herbert H. Johnson Associates (architects) and Symmes, Main, and McKee Inc. (associate architects and engineers).
8. New York-based Bellwether Properties purchased the property in 1920 for more than $2000.
9. When the Matto family members sell their land in 2065, the property that was purchased for $2,000 in 1920 is expected to be worth $75 million.
10. Burlington Mall Road was built to connect Cambridge Street and Middlesex Turnpike and is seen a thoughtful traffic planning. Without the road, the mall would have led to an almost immediate traffic nightmare.
11. The Mall Road, however, did not open until later in 1968, after the mall itself had been open for business for several months.
12. The Burlington Mall's original anchor stores were Sear's, Filene's and Jordan Marsh. The wing with the Lord & Taylor anchor was built in 1978.
13. When the mall opened, there was a small Stop & Shop supermarket located where the Bank of America branch is now.
14. Ed Gaffey of Mill Street is believed to have been the mall's first customer when he walked into Sear's shortly after 9:30 am on July 28, 1968
15. Gaffey, who went to Sear's to buy silver paint for the roof of his shed, was seemingly unaware of his place in history until a clerk ringing up his purchase told him he was the mall's first customer.
16. The mall had 52 stores when it opened, including the three anchors.
17. One of the mall's biggest draws was that it was fully enclosed and air-conditioned. The Winchester Star reported it would remain a "balmy 72 degrees" year-round when it opened.
18. Some 200,000 people visited the mall on its first day of business. That put considerable strain on the 6,000 parking spaces, and police had to block entrances with "parking lot full" signs twice on the opening day.
19. When it opened, Burlington Mall was one of the first malls to have an indoor food court, which was called Town Meeting.
20. An adjoining business park was under construction at the same time as the Burlington Mall. The original plans called for three office towers, but only one was built.
21. Burlington Mall Road unleashed a flood of new development in town. Most notably, the Lahey Clinic almost immediately started planning for its campus as soon as the road opened.
22. Lahey also threw its support behind a nearby hotel, which would eventually become the Burlington Marriott.
23. Before Lahey Clinic located there, the land it now sits on was mostly empty. That is, except for once a year, when it hosted Circus Vargas.
24. Vinebrook Plaza and the Marketplace, took advantage of the mall's opening by developing small-scale shopping centers in property adjacent to the mall.
25. There was a two-screen cinema located where Besito Mexican restaurant is now located. There was no flashy, national chain behind the theater. It was simply known as Cinema I and Cinema II.
26. The federal minimum wage when the mall opened was $1.60 per hour.
27. Gillian Dent received a small spruce sapling during an Earth Day event a few weeks after the mall opened. She planted the sapling in the front yard of her Dennis Drive home.
28. Today, Dent's tree is alive and well and nearly twice as tall as the two story home at 3 Dennis Drive.
29. The mall was the home to the first escalator in Burlington.
30. Dent was part of a group of children invited to create and present murals for display in the mall. The children were encouraged to make drawings depicting the escalator.
31. The mall's original manager was Hugh Gioacchini, who was hands on throughout the construction, even inspecting the installation of plants and shrubs in the mall.
32. "The art teacher wanted us to do a picture of an escalator because there was no such thing in Burlington at the time," Dent told Burlington Retro. "Eight kids each painted a person on the escalator. Mine was the girl with the ice cream cone. At the time Brigham's and Friendly Ice Cream were in the mall."
33. The 1968 Miss Burlington Pageant was held at the mall as part of the grand opening.
34. The pageant's winner, Shirley Capecci of East Boston, used the $250 first prize to pay for an entire semester's tuition at the University of Massachusetts.
35. "It really built my confidence, helped me lose my East Boston accent and become comfortable speaking before crowds. It was a great experience. I went on to college, law school, and I've been practicing law for 40 years," Capecci, now of San Diego, told Burlington Retro. "The mall opening was a big event and everyone seemed happy about it. People were welcoming and friendly to me even though I did not live in Burlington. The prize included a large portrait of me in my evening gown, which I still have in Boston. It's a fond memory. I always thought Burlington was and is a great New England town."
36. The parking lot outside of Sear's was once the South School, a one-room schoolhouse that served Burlington when it was a town of 1,000.
37. The development of the mall came in conjunction with the construction of Route 128.
38. That road tied Burlington to the national highway system and led to a population boom; today, Burlington has 24,498 residents, according to the most recent data from the U.S. Census.
39. Burlington Retro called the mall's original publicist, John G. Hanron Sr. (1938-2014), "the Don King of shopping malls." Hanron was a former Marine photojournalist whose daughter gave Burlington Retro access to his files and photos.
40. It was Hanron who arranged to have local legend Rex Trailer and Santa Claus arrive at the mall by helicopter ahead of the 1968 Christmas shopping season. Trailer was a regional TV personality best known as the host of the long-running children's television show "Boomtown."
41. Only three of the mall's original tenants are still doing business: Sear's, Ann Taylor and Spencer's Gifts. "Yes, many fine purveyors of consumer products at the mall have folded, but the fake vomit and rubber chickens at Spencer's still move the needle in Burlington 50 years later," the Burlington Retro article noted.
42. Other once mighty names of New England retail that were part of the mall's original roster and have since closed include Brigham's, Radio Shack and Middlesex County National Bank. Burlington Retro published a reprint of an advertisem*nt for the mall's opening that lists all the original tenants.
43. The mall's second story was added as part of an expansion in 1988. The anchor stores, however, were originally built in their current two- and three-story forms.
44. While currently ranked second on the list of biggest malls in Massachusetts, Burlington Mall was the biggest in the state before the Natick Mall expansion.
45. Following an expansion between 2006 and 2008, the mall now has 185 shops and restaurants and more than 1.3 million square feet of retail space.
46. The 2008 expansion was aimed at giving the mall a more affluent clientelle. The expansion was the renovation of the out-of-business Filene's store and includes a string of higher-ended retailers, anchored by Nordstrom's.
47. In 2009, the mall took a star turn as the fictional West Orange Pavilion Mall in the feature film "Paul Blart: Mall Cop."
48. The mall is notable for a number of its firsts: it's the first U.S. location for Irish retailer Primark and was one of the first Massachusetts locations for Chik-Fil-A. It is also has the only Blue Stove Restaurant within a Nordstrom store in the northeastern United States.
49. The current food court now has seating for 775 diners.
50. Burlington Mall's continued success still relies on location. According to Simon Property Group, the mall's current owner, six million square feet of commercial office space are located within one mile of the mall. There are also 1,100 hotel rooms located within three miles of the mall.

For more on this story, see Burlington Retro.

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Dave Copeland can be reached at dave.copeland@patch.com or by calling 617-433-7851. Follow him on Twitter (@CopeWrites) and Facebook (/copewrites).

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