Star Market - Newtonville, MA

Star Market
Opened: ca. 2015

Owner: Albertsons Companies

Previous Tenants: Star Market (1963-early 00s) > Shaw's (early 00s-ca. 2015)

Cooperative: none

Location: 33 Austin St, Newtonville, MA

Photographed: December 18, 2020 and December 17, 2022

Contributor: Lars D.

If there's one thing you remember about Boston supermarkets, it's that grocers in this area get creative. They've managed to stick supermarkets in former theaters, the basement of a famous department store, the basement of a train station, a semicircle building, and a former car dealership. But have you ever seen a supermarket built on top of a highway before?

If you even have a passing interest in supermarkets of the Boston area, you've probably heard of the famous Newtonville Star Market. This unusual store was constructed in all of its brutalist glory in 1963, shortly after the Auburndale location opened. And a store like this just begs the question. Why?

WGBH's Curiosity Desk asked that exact question: how did that Star Market end up over the Massachusetts Turnpike? The answer is actually pretty simple: well, when the Mass Pike was being constructed, it was planned to go right through the parking lot of an existing Star Market. After much negotiation and litigation, Star Market got the air rights to build a store on the same property -- just on top of the highway. Make sure to check out that WGBH article for lots more details.

This store has been shared in any number of circles, and has become famous as a retail and urban planning anomaly. But let's take a close look at the store -- as far as I know, even other sites that discuss it don't examine the supermarket itself in depth. And that's what I'm here for.

First, a photo from Lars, a Market Report regular contributor, to give us an idea of what the store looks like from the Mass Pike that runs underneath it.

The supermarket is around 36,000 square feet, though it may be a bit larger if there's backroom space on a lower level. The supermarket itself is actually on the second floor of this building, with a row of storefronts below it on the first floor. You can see those in the last exterior photo below. Like the majority of the Star Markets in the Boston area, this one became a Shaw's briefly in the early 00s, switching back to Star Market in 2015. It was renovated when it switched in 2015, then again redone at some point around 2020 but without changing the decor.

We enter on the street (you can see the entrance under the small Star Market sign on the left above) and then go up a staircase/escalator setup to the supermarket on the second floor of the building. It's a similar setup to, but significantly less grand than, the Chestnut Hill store.

This store has been remodeled several times over the years, and it's in really good shape considering its age (well, inside at least. The outside looks like, well, a big cinderblock). The last big renovation was in the 90s, and like Quincy it actually shares a lot of similarities to ACMEs of that time because they shared ownership then. The layout is pretty much identical to 90s-era ACMEs, with produce in the front-right corner and floral opposite. Bakery is on the right side of the store in the first aisle with packaged meat behind that in the first aisle, and service meat and seafood at the back. Deli is next on the back wall, with packaged deli and cheese to the left of that and then dairy/frozen on the left side. No pharmacy here, but there is a bank branch in the front-left corner, and there's also a kosher department in the second aisle.

Hmmm, I'm not sure this "serving the best with pride" banner here works, since it covers the windows and is impossible to read. Kind of the worst of both options. But the fixtures look great, and they're all new (like the produce islands here) or newly refurbished, such as the cases with doors.

The produce alcove was a standard feature in ACME (and Star Market) stores of this era. As I mentioned on the Quincy post, ACME and Star Market shared ownership at the time, then were split for a time when ACME was owned by Albertsons and Star Market was owned by Sainsbury's, then reunited when both were rolled into what became Supervalu's grocery operation.

Looking across the front-end from produce...

And here's a look at the first aisle, with bakery and packaged meats here. I must say I don't really like this layout -- bakery doesn't quite make sense here. I much prefer the Shaw's layout of around this time and slightly later, an example of which you can see in Raynham.

Around 2020, this store got quite a bit of work done, including all new bakery fixtures here. The flooring was also replaced here on the right side, but not in the rest of the store. More on that later.

It's been kept up well, and inside it doesn't feel nearly as old as it is -- although that's likely a result of the more significant work clearly done here in the 1990s.

A large meat and seafood counter is up next on the back wall, with deli next to that. You can catch a glimpse of the old flooring here, too.

Looking across the back wall. Unlike some other Star Markets, this one doesn't really have a dedicated prepared foods department and doesn't have some of the more specialized features like a sushi counter.

Kosher refrigerated, frozen, and grocery items are here in the second aisle. There's a large Jewish community in parts of this area, and two of the Star Markets around here even have kosher certified bakeries. This one doesn't, though.

This alcove on the back wall might have previously been some other service department -- or, I would bet, originally the meat room -- but today it's the cheese department, which doesn't get a department sign like it does in other Star Markets.

Taking a look at the flooring here, we can get a clearer sense of this store's past. In fact, its flooring gives away the decor that it would've had in the 90s renovation -- this decor package, which in Middlesex (linked there) is paired with flooring from a previous decor package. That decor package was used at both ACME and Star Market. Consider this former Star Market, later a Hannaford and now a (fully renovated) Big Y. The bones of the decor and certainly the flooring are the same style as this store would've had. When that store was taken over by Hannaford, they simply put their own lettering over the existing Star Market decor.

12 aisles in total, not counting the first bakery/meat aisle (which isn't numbered) and we actually get an aisle 12 shot!

Looking across the front-end from the bank branch in the corner here. I don't know if this store ever had a pharmacy, but if it did, it would've been in this corner.

Because of the store's unusual setup, it has a parcel system that allows customers to load their groceries in a tub that goes down a conveyor belt to the parking lot at the lower level. (Carts can't go outside here, and there's no system in fact to get carts up and down from the second-floor supermarket.) You can then drive into a tunnel under the supermarket and pick up your groceries. This system used to be more common, and is still in use sometimes in Canada. You can see where the stairs and escalator are behind the conveyor belt.

And that wraps up our look at the Newtonville Star Market, a truly unique store that I'm glad has been preserved in its unusual form. But it also seems like it's a well-run, well-used supermarket that hasn't become outdated.

There's another supermarket in Newtonville just east of here, and we'll be checking that store out along with a specialty store tomorrow to finish up the week. And don't miss today's other post, a look at the recently-closed Oakley Spa just down the street!