Harvard Student Housing | 10 Akron St | Harvard Square | Cambridge

[kz1000ps]

This is just south of the Peabody Towers

 

[ablarc]

Paltry.

Or is that "piffling"?

 

[kz1000ps]

The "10 Akron Street" project south of Peabody Towers, taken Thursday 5/30

(couldn't get a better angle than this)

 

[vanshnookenraggen]

Memorial Drive Housing
The Memorial Drive project consists of two parcels: parcel A (north of Hingham Street bounded by Memorial Drive, Akron, and Banks Street), and parcel B (south of Hingham Street bounded by Memorial Drive and Western Avenue).
Parcel A will be developed with a single building that concentrates the massing along Akron Street and Memorial Drive and includes a low-rise section at 35 feet along Banks Street.
Parcel B will be developed as three separate 35 feet structures extending from Hingham Street to Western Avenue along the eastern edge of the property.

 

[underground]

The sight for the possible museum is across the river.

 

[czsz]

No, he doesn't mean the Allston museum. He's referring to an older plan for a Harvard contemporary art museum on the Charles that was completely shot down by NIMBYs who thought their riverfront would be ruined by a practically underground building.

 

[palindrome]

Wasn't the museum also going to be designed by piano?

 

[blade_bltz]

So does Mahoney's no longer exist at that location?

 

[vanshnookenraggen]

I think they went out 2 or 3 years ago.

 

[stellarfun]

It took a bit of googling because I thought the plan was more than a decade ago.

Here is a 2001 story (with one rendering and site plan) of the proposed museums, and neighborhood concern.

http://www.harvardmagazine.com/on-line/050189.html

An earlier story (from 1999):
http://www.harvard-magazine.com/nd99/jhj.riverfront.html

Basically, the Cambridge city council put a moratorium on putting museums there, so Harvard decided to put them in Allston instead, and simply use the site for housing. The neighbors objected to housing, tall trees would be cut, and their view of the river obstructed. The neighbors didn't prevail this time. Harvard sweetened the pot too, by building 33 units of affordable housing in the Switch House (see image below).

 

[stellarfun]

This Harvard construction project is substantially complete. It is near the Mather and Leverett Houses.

Boundaries are Grant, Banks, and Cowperthwaite streets.

Site plan:

Renovated three deckers on Grant St. Gussied up Victorians. Owned by Harvard real estate for graduate students, faculty, etc.

 

[bosdevelopment]

Those new units fit perfectly. Cambridge will never be super-dense along the river so these look more than appropriate.

I don't know how many people are going to visit a museum in derelict allston though.

 

[kz1000ps]

I've posted construction photos of the Memorial Drive project (officially know as "10 Akron") over in the Harvard Allston Campus thread, and those can be found on pages 5 and 8. I haven't taken any shots of the Coperthwaite-area project, but only because I wasn't aware of it.

Of course this is up to Van, but it might be worth it to make a new thread for these two developments.

 

[vanshnookenraggen]

If all these developments are just a few units of housing then I don't see the need for each having its own thread.

On the topic of the housing, I think these are some of the most well designed new homes I have seen in a long time. They are modern but completely fit in. Why can't larger buildings be like these?

 

[stellarfun]

following pictures taken on Oct. 14.

Harvard graduate student housing on Memorial Drive (where the museum was to be built on the site of the garden nursery). The open space in the foreground is to be a park. Bond Brothers is the general contractor.

Harvard is also apparently having to rebuild the concrete facade of Peabody Towers in the background, because it has deteriorated.

Another Harvard graduate housing complex, completed a month or two ago. This is north of Mather House and on or near Copperthwaite St. (sp?)
The bottom two pictures are infill houses that Harvard either moved or built there. I discovered that one way to tell a Harvard owned building (at least in this neighborhood) was a fire alarm enunciator on the front facade. Harvard owns (at least) one more building in a cluster of homes here -- a run-down three decker -- which they have started renovating.

 

[kz1000ps]

I couldn't find a thread for these, so I'll dump them here for now. This is Harvard's graduate housing going up on the Cambridge side of the Charles:

don't know what's up with the facade

 

[vanshnookenraggen]

Re: Harvard - Allston Campus

And we could have had a museum.

 

[Arborway]

Re: Harvard - Allston Campus

That white building has all the charm of a shipping crate! The architect should be ashamed.

 

[kz1000ps]

Re: Harvard - Allston Campus

I know! The facade looks like it's aged a good twenty years already, and I had to check the several-year-old aerial shots on Live Maps to see if it had or hadn't already been there for decades.

 

[chumbolly]

Re: Harvard - Allston Campus

That white building has all the charm of a shipping crate! The architect should be ashamed.

Well, considering that Harvard probably spent loads of money to have a beautiful museum designed by a world-renowned architect, only to have it nixed by the neighbors who preferred their view of a parking lot, I'll bet that Harvard told their architect to build a box, and to keep it Home Depot-cheap. Personally, I think this result is hilarious.