The factory opened in 1937 as part of GM's strategy to place production facilities in major metropolitan areas rather than concentrating everything in Detroit. Linden was the second of several Buick-Oldsmobile-Pontiac "branch" assembly plants, following the Pontiac-operated South Gate facility in California. The workers assembled vehicles from knock-down kits -- pre-fabricated components shipped from Michigan and bolted together on the New Jersey line. Between 1937 and 1941, the plant produced 343,000 automobiles. Then Pearl Harbor changed the assignment.

During World War II, the Linden plant joined General Motors' Eastern Aircraft Division and pivoted from automobiles to fighter planes. The factory produced FM-1 and FM-2 Wildcats, improved versions of the Grumman F4F Wildcat, for the United States Navy. The location made sense: Linden Airport sat adjacent to the plant, providing a ready-made runway for testing completed aircraft. When the war ended, automobile production resumed under GM's newly created Buick-Oldsmobile-Pontiac Assembly Division, established in 1945. That division was later renamed the GM Assembly Division in 1965, but the plant's identity as a place where things got built -- cars or planes, whatever was required -- had already been forged.

By the 1970s, Linden Assembly had moved upmarket. The plant produced luxury models from Buick, Cadillac, and Oldsmobile, and in 1971 it made history as the first factory outside Cadillac's home plant in Detroit to assemble Cadillacs -- specifically, the C-body DeVille. Eight years later, Linden became the sole production source for three of GM's most glamorous personal luxury coupes: the Oldsmobile Toronado, the Buick Riviera, and the Cadillac Eldorado. The closely related Cadillac Seville followed in 1980. For a decade, some of the most recognizable cars on American roads originated from this factory along the New Jersey Turnpike corridor.

The mid-1980s brought a shift to the GM L-platform, as the factory was retooled to produce the Chevrolet Beretta and Corsica starting in 1987. Then, in September 1991, Linden Assembly went idle for a more dramatic transformation: conversion to truck and SUV production. When it reopened in 1993, the line turned out Chevrolet S-10 pickups, GMC Sonomas, Chevrolet Blazers, and GMC Jimmys. But the economics of American manufacturing were shifting. In February 2002, GM announced plans to close the plant, though negotiations with the state government and the union delayed the final date. The factory that had built warplanes and Cadillacs finally fell silent in 2005.

After the closure, the 2.6-million-square-foot complex was razed as part of what Linden officials called a municipal "renaissance." The demolition erased one of the largest industrial landmarks in Union County, a factory whose workforce had numbered in the thousands and whose production line had touched nearly every era of 20th-century American life -- the prewar boom, the wartime mobilization, the postwar luxury market, the SUV craze. Adjacent Linden Airport still operates, a reminder that aircraft once taxied from the plant's doors to a nearby runway. The site itself has been cleared for redevelopment, leaving the story of what happened there to be carried by the people who built 68 years' worth of machines inside its walls.