Architectural History Blog

The Whitney Hotel // 2019

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The Whitney Hotel on the iconic Charles Street in Beacon Hill, represents the best of contextual infill construction and good design. Completed in 2019, the hotel was built on an open lot adjacent to the 1909 Eye and Ear Infirmary Nurse’s Residence that sold in 2016. Developers hired Boston architectural design firm of Hacin to construct the new structure as an addition to the 1909 building. As the building is located within the Historic Beacon Hill District, a local commission closely reviewed plans to ensure the new building would blend old and new on the site, while being its own landmark on the prominent corner lot. The scale, massing, materials and rhythm of windows ties the 2019 contemporary wing with the 1909 building, while the brick layering styles, window types and unique rounded corner read clearly contemporary. The hotel is named after Henry Melville Whitney (1839-1923) a Boston politician and businessman who founded the West End Street Railway Company, which preceded the Metropolitan Transit Authority and today’s MBTA. The Whitney Hotel serves as an important visual anchor and entrance into Beacon Hill, enlivening the street and neighborhood through high-quality design.

Eye and Ear Infirmary Nurse’s Residence // 1909

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The Massachusetts Charitable Eye and Ear Infirmary (now Massachusetts Eye and Ear) began in 1824 by doctors, Edward Reynolds and John Jeffries II as a free weekly clinic they operated out of a rented room in Boston’s Scollay Square. At the time, Boston was an immigration destination for laborers arriving from Europe, among whom occupational injuries were common, but affordable medical care was scarce. With an increasing population and increasing medical needs, the clinic expanded rapidly. In 1849, a new clinic was built on Charles Street, just south of the West Boston Bridge (now Longfellow Bridge) from plans by Edward C. Cabot. As demand grew in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the hospital sought expansion and built a new facility farther north on Charles Street, closer to Massachusetts General Hospital. The 1849 building was deemed excess and demolished, soon to be replaced by the current building on the site, the Nurse’s Dormitory. Built in 1909, this handsome, four-story brick and stone structure was designed by the office of Page and Frothingham in the Colonial Revival style, which contributes to the architectural character of Beacon Hill. The building provided much-needed residential space for nurses and other staff people who worked at the new Eye and Ear Infirmary a few blocks away. The building was later converted into an inn, the John Jeffries House (after one of the founders of the infirmary) until 2016, when the site closed and was converted into a wing of the new Whitney Hotel by Hacin Architects!

Benjamin Franklin College & Pauli Murray College, Yale University // 2017

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Opened in 2017, the two newest residential colleges at Yale University, Benjamin Franklin College and Pauli Murray College, became a case study in how contemporary buildings can honor traditional design while introducing 21st-century amenities. Designed by Robert A. M. Stern Architects (RAMSA), the two large dormitories reinforce Yale’s legacy of collegiate Gothic architecture while reading as new construction to the trained eye. The two buildings feature unique layouts to create enclosed courtyards and are stylistically designed as fraternal twins, similar in size and palette but each enjoying its own identity and organization. RAMSA architects were inspired by James Gamble Rogers’ 1930s Colleges at Yale, which (like at Harvard) were inspired by the college systems at Cambridge and Oxford in England which create enclosed quads or courtyards for students in self-contained housing. Like Rogers’ Neo-Gothic Yale buildings, the Franklin and Murray Colleges feature battlements, stained and leaded glass windows, iron gateways, towers, and hidden stone gargoyles. The two buildings are a tour de force of Traditional Architecture that blends new and old in all the best ways.

Becton Engineering and Science Center, Yale // 1968

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The Becton Engineering and Science Center at Yale is a behemoth academic building on Prospect Street containing offices, laboratories, a library, and an auditorium for the world-renowned institution. Discussions about a new engineering and science center began in 1965 after a generous donation by Yale alumni, Henry Prentiss Becton, and the University hired famous Modernist architect, Marcel Breuer to design the new building opposite the city’s Grove Street cemetery. For the design, Breuer used precast concrete panels and logical planning, to maximize interior space through the building which required less vertical columns in the floorplates. At the street, an elongated arcade provides views into the interior spaces and serves as a shelter from the weather. The arcade and facade above is supported by stunning buttress-like columns, a Modernist nod to the predominant Gothic buildings and character of Yale’s campus. A landmark example of the Brutalist style, the Becton Center serves as a great, and well-preserved example of an often maligned period of American architecture.

Yale Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking // 2020

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The Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking at Yale University is a contemporary, 12,200-square-foot center tucked away behind larger buildings that serves as an important nucleus for research-based programs within Yale’s School of Engineering and Applied Science. The center brings together students from diverse disciplines to the new building where collaboration to solve real-world issues can be done. Designed by Weiss/Manfredi, the innovative building’s elliptical form is centrally positioned in a courtyard surrounded by taller, boxy structures, creating a unique juxtaposition. Lined by undulating, transparent glass walls, the design allows visibility inside to see and participate in the work inside. The Tsai Center is one of my favorite new buildings in New England and showcases how high-quality and innovative design can make a big architectural statement, even if the building is just a small pavillion-like structure.

Sheffield-Sterling-Strathcona Hall // 1931

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Sheffield-Sterling-Strathcona Hall, a handsome Collegiate/Neo-Gothic Revival style building at the corner of Prospect and Grove streets, was built in 1931-1932 as three, interconnected buildings in a single composition. Architect, Clarence C. Zantzinger, designed the building, with its facade dominated by a 11-story corner tower flanked by four-story wings. The building replaced the Old Sheffield Hall (later known as South Sheffield), originally a hotel built by James Abraham Hillhouse around 1820, which later served as the Yale Medical Institution, later renovated and expanded for the Sheffield Scientific School, which officially merged with Yale University in 1956. The new building is named for its historic connections with the Sheffield Scientific School, also following donations by John W. Sterling and Lord Strathcona. Steel-framed and clad with Indiana limestone, the building commands the prominent corner site.

Old Wolf’s Head Society Building // 1884

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The Wolf’s Head was established in 1883 as one of Yale’s secret societies. It was intended as an alternative to the more established Skull and Bones and Scroll and Key societies, and it made a statement when it completed this clubhouse in 1884. The handsome Richardsonian Romanesque clubhouse at the corner of Prospect and Trumbull streets in New Haven was designed by the firm of McKim, Mead and White, which would go on to become one of the leading architectural firms in the country during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The rough-faced brownstone structure was historically covered in climbing ivy, adding to the building’s mysterious nature. Wolf’s Head made it their home from 1884 until 1924 when the building was sold to the University and Wolf’s Head moved to new quarters on York Street. The building was rented to clubs for years until the early 1960s, when it started to be used for faculty offices, staff and classrooms. The building was added onto and today, the old Wolf’s Head is used by the Institution for Social and Policy Studies.

James Dwight Dana House // 1849

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The James Dwight Dana House at 24 Hillhouse Avenue in New Haven, Connecticut, is a landmark early example of an Italianate style residence designed by a famed 19th century architect. Built in 1849 from plans by architect Henry Austin, the house was constructed for owner, James Dwight Dana (1813-1895) and his new wife, Henrietta Silliman and possibly funded by her father, Benjamin Silliman, a Yale professor who was considered “The Father of Science in America”. James Dwight Dana’s education in geology, in addition to his studies with his father-in-law, Professor Silliman, extended to the four-year United States Exploring Expedition between 1838–1842), in which Dana served as the staff geologist and mineralogist, exposing him to a wide-ranging variety of geological formations and minerals. Upon his return to New Haven, he married Silliman’s daughter and then moved into this stately home. Later in his career, Dana was responsible for developing much of the early knowledge on Hawaiian volcanism. In 1880 and 1881 he led the first geological study of Hawaii. The James Dwight Dana House has a three-bay front facade, with a single-story porch extending across its width, supported by wooden columns with unique capitals. The shallow roof has broad, overhanging eaves sheltering a unique corbelled brick cornice. The building was added onto in 1905 with similar architecture and was purchased by Yale in 1962. Today, the building is preserved by the University and houses the Institution for Social & Policy Studies (ISPS).

Simmons House – Japanese Relocation Hostel // 1856

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Together with its two neighbors to the south, this townhouse at 6 Walnut Street represents the development of the South Slope of Beacon Hill in the second half of the 19th century, when larger estates continued to be carved up for housing, typically in the Italianate/Second Empire styles. Built in 1856, this residence was constructed on one of the last undeveloped lots in the area and was originally owned by George W. Simmons. Simmons was the owner of a well-known clothing emporium at Oak Hall, North Street, where he sold all kinds of ready-made clothing for men, including that needed by sailors, as well as sets of clothing for those headed for the California gold fields. His business was renowned also for its ambitious and creative advertising campaigns. Simmons died in late 1882, leaving this property to his heirs who sold the property. After successive ownership, the residence was converted to a boarding house during the Great Depression and rented out to families who could no longer afford the large single-family dwellings in the city. After WWII, in 1945, the boarding house was converted into the first Relocation Hostel for Japanese Americans in New England. The mission of the Relocation Hostels was to provide temporary lodging and career guidance to Japanese Americans who had been uprooted from their homes because of unfounded accusations of sabotage during World War II. Massachusetts joined New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and other states in establishing these hostels. Today, the residence is a four-unit condominium. 

Perkins House – Diocesan House // 1832

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Constructed of red brick and trimmed with brownstone, the beautiful townhouse at 1 Joy Street, is one of a few properties in Boston’s Beacon Hill neighborhood to have a front yard. Built in 1832, the four-story residence has its primary facade characterized by a flat entrance with a rounded bay extending upwards to the roof. Designed by architect, Cornelius Coolidge, who designed many other homes in this section of Beacon Hill, the completed house was purchased by Thomas Handasyd Perkins, Jr. (1796-1850), the eldest son of the enormously wealthy and influential Thomas Handasyd Perkins, Sr., who is considered by many to have been the most successful merchant prince of Boston’s Federal period. In 1892, the Episcopal Association purchased 1 Joy Street for use as headquarters of the diocese, and it became known as the Diocesan House. Today, the building is divided up into condominium units, providing residences just steps from the Boston Common.