Post Modern Boston

Federal Reserve Bank of Boston // 1972

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Established by Congress in 1913, the Federal Reserve System is the nation’s quasi-public central bank. Its primary functions are to set monetary policy, supervise and regulate banking institutions, maintain a stable financial system, and provide financial services to the U.S. government, the public, and domestic and international financial institutions. Organized in 1914, the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston is one of 12 district banks across the country and serves the six New England states. Construction for the Boston Reserve’s Renaissance revival bank was begun in 1920 and finished in 1922, but was outgrown in the second half of the 20th century. The original building would be landmarked and is now known as the Langham, a luxury hotel. Planning began on a newer office and a site was acquired on waterfront land cleared from Urban Renewal in the late 1960s. The current building was constructed between 1972 and
1974, and occupied by the bank in 1977. Designed by the firm Hugh Stubbins & Associates, the complex occupies a full city block, with the 32-story tower and a 4-story section serving as the bulk of the mass. A 600-ton major steel structure called a “truss” marks the beginning of the tower’s offices above the breezeway. The exterior is natural anodized aluminum, which acts as a curtain wall and weatherproof facing. The aluminum spandrels or “eye-brows” shade the building interior from the sun in the summertime and allow more sunlight in the winter months. Love it or hate it, this building is extremely significant architecturally for its Modern design and materiality, and for its engineering. It has become a visual landmark and anchor into Boston’s dense Downtown.

Long Wharf Hotel // 1982

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In the second half of the 20th century, much of Downtown Boston and the Waterfront areas were blighted with decaying buildings. Seeing tax dollars flee to the suburbs, the City of Boston used Urban Renewal to demolish large areas to erect new neighborhoods and blocks to revitalize the city. Much of it was done with a heavy hand, evicting largely minority and immigrant residents and razing of traditionally walkable neighborhoods for more car-centric districts. The Waterfront was traditionally the economic hub of Boston, with large commercial wharf buildings jutting out into the harbor symbolizing the economy’s strong ties to maritime trade for centuries. Boston Properties was an early developer who saw the potential of the revitalized waterfront, and developed this hotel off Long Wharf. Architect, Araldo Cossutta, (who was originally picked 8th of 8 submissions in a design competition) was ultimately selected to design the hotel, which at first glance may look out of place. However, the building draws cues from the area, evoking the Quincy Market warehouses as well as the attributes of a modern ocean liner on its head. Relatively simple massing with rectilinear and semi-circular fenestration at the lower level rises to a complex series of stepped back balconies, which form a steep gabled roof. To me, its the right amount of recessiveness and boldness in Postmodernism.

Heritage on the Garden // 1988

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Located across Arlington Street from the since demolished Shreve, Crump & Low building (last post), Heritage on the Garden stands overlooking the Boston Public Garden. Heritage on the Garden was a result of a redevelopment initiative known as the Park Plaza Project, one of the city’s many urban renewal projects of the 1960s and 1970s, where buildings, blocks, and sometimes neighborhoods were razed and redeveloped. As part of the city’s effort of dramatic urban renewal, the Park Plaza area was identified as a site for intensive new uses, including hotel and apartment towers ranging from thirty to fifty stories! The impact of these buildings on the Public Garden and Boston Common was considered unacceptable by many residents of the city, with citizen participation helped to require lower-height buildings which would front the iconic Public Garden. In the 1980s, nearly the entire block of Boylston Street between Arlington and Hadassah Way was razed for the erection of the new condominium building, developed by the Druker Company and designed by The Architects Collaborative (TAC). The project was one of the last of the iconic TAC firm, once led by Walter Gropius, who helped bring Modernism to the United States. The Post-Modern style building ranges from five- to twelve-stories tall and is constructed of brick with cast stone, a nod to the historic Boston architecture, but with modern forms and projections. I think it works quite well, but maybe that is because I wasn’t around to see what was there before…

Forest Hills Station // 1987

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Photo courtesy of Cambridge Seven

While the demolition of the 1909 Forest Hills Station in Jamaica Plain (last post) was a huge architectural and historic loss for the city of Boston, the present building is a landmark in its own right. The present building was built in 1987 as a pivotal project in the MBTA’s Southwest Corridor Improvement Program, which was largely unfinished (thanks to neighborhood pushback and protests against the proposed highway to cut through the neighborhoods). The existing station, designed by local firm Cambridge Seven, is situated between two important points in Boston’s “Emerald Necklace” park system, and thus was given the appearance of a greenhouse by the architects. The distinctive clock tower, rising 120 feet above the station, signals the station location and is a nod to the days when stations once had prominent clocks to help passengers keep tabs on the time, before the days of cellphones!

125 Summer Street // 1989

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The late 1980s were a time of financial success for developers and banking companies all over the country. It seems that more skyscrapers were constructed in Boston this decade than any other of the 20th century, but working within the confines of the historic downtown of the city, left architects and developers to come up with creative ways to build here. The architectural firm of Kohn Pederson Fox was hired to construct a 20+ story office tower at the southern edge of the Financial District in Boston, while preserving the small-scale commercial buildings there. A row of four-story commercial blocks constructed after the Great Boston Fire of 1872 were retained with the tower seemingly growing out of them. The process here is known as “facadism” which is a valuable preservation tool to balance preservation with density in historic downtowns, though not always done right. This KPF design with its Post-Modern tower in concrete and granite fits well within the streetscape and maintains a walkable block downtown.

What do you think of this design?