Hurley Building Redevelopment | 19 Staniford St | West End

vanshnookenraggen said:
This is quite literally the worst thing that could happen. I've seen these facade-ectamies before and they are a slap in the face of architecture and historic preservation. It's the worst of both worlds. It also assumes that, in 2022, there is any serious architect that could replace this building with anything other than a jumbled mess of mediocrity.
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No, I believe you have missed my point. I am not advocating for a facadectomy, nor anything like the proposal put forth above. I'd love to see quality preservation and re-use integral with a reimagining of the full parcel to make it maximally useful (and with housing). My point was that, since a half-assed abomination of a facadectomy is the worst of all worlds, then my second choice would be a near total tear-down with literally a few "sculptures" remaining. You may not agree with me, since clearly you are all in for full preservation (and I respect that). But let me firmly clarify that nothing about what I was saying (as a next-best) was "facadectomy"...I was talking about literally leaving nothing more than a few columns here or there as being better than a botched and mangled facadectoy. (And I am not sure how you ascertained "facadectomy" from my photo of a couple of green line EL posts). Again, peace if we disagree, but let's at least agree on what to disagree about.
 
bigpicture7 said:
No, I believe you have missed my point. I am not advocating for a facadectomy, nor anything like the proposal put forth above. I'd love to see quality preservation and re-use integral with a reimagining of the full parcel to make it maximally useful (and with housing). My point was that, since a half-assed abomination of a facadectomy is the worst of all worlds, then my second choice would be a near total tear-down with literally a few "sculptures" remaining. You may not agree with me, since clearly you are all in for full preservation (and I respect that). But let me firmly clarify that nothing about what I was saying (as a next-best) was "facadectomy"...I was talking about literally leaving nothing more than a few columns here or there as being better than a botched and mangled facadectoy. (And I am not sure how you ascertained "facadectomy" from my photo of a couple of green line EL posts). Again, peace if we disagree, but let's at least agree on what to disagree about.
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And if by "serious architect" you mean someone like Paul Rudolph, no thank you. Architects have done enough damage to this city.
 
stick n move said:
Demo the damn building, this is the worst of both worlds. Having a courtyard would be much more pleasant than slapping glass onto the city block length concrete wall thats there. Just demo it and start from scratch with something tasteful with good street level interaction and its a win.
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The Globe says the courtyard issue will be addressed:

"Bill Gause, executive vice president at Leggat McCall, said his firm plans to redo the central tiered courtyard — in part by flattening it and building a garage underneath — and to provide more public access points to it. In particular, he hopes to retain the unusual exterior curved stairway that connects the courtyard to Merrimac Street.

“The idea is to really open up the ‘super block’ and create a more inclusive, friendly, welcoming space in the interior,” said Gause, who noted that the famed large-scale lobby murals by artist Costantino Nivola will also be retained. “This is going to be a delicate balance of preserving what’s there while allowing for future buildings to work in concert with that.”"
 
navigator4 said:
The Globe says the courtyard issue will be addressed:

"Bill Gause, executive vice president at Leggat McCall, said his firm plans to redo the central tiered courtyard — in part by flattening it and building a garage underneath — and to provide more public access points to it. In particular, he hopes to retain the unusual exterior curved stairway that connects the courtyard to Merrimac Street.

“The idea is to really open up the ‘super block’ and create a more inclusive, friendly, welcoming space in the interior,” said Gause, who noted that the famed large-scale lobby murals by artist Costantino Nivola will also be retained. “This is going to be a delicate balance of preserving what’s there while allowing for future buildings to work in concert with that.”"
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Interesting. A couple of thoughts:

  • There's a garage under the elevated part already, so I wonder if "flattening it" means raising the entire thing to the level of the current elevated portion (level with Cambridge St.) and expanding the existing garage (likely with a New Chardon entrance) or if they plan on getting rid of the current garage and dropping the plaza down to the elevation of the current section that's flush with New Chardon? I'm guessing they want to elevated it (which would make sense for keeping and hopefully opening the stairs). The existing pedestrian corridor between the Brooke Courthouse and the Lindemann connecting New Chardon at Bulfinch Pl to Merrimac is pretty heavily trafficked - I wonder how they'll maintain that connection with the elevated plaza?
  • The current renders do nothing to "open up the super block." The fact that this project does nothing to break up the nearly 800 feet of unbroken streetwall along Staniford means that the super block will remain, regardless of what they do to the plaza or slap on top of the existing building. At a bare minimum, they should punch a big, obvious, publicly accessible hole through the Hurley at Cardinal O'Connell Way to allow pedestrians to cut through without having to walk up to Cambridge or down to Merrimac.
 
Lrfox said:
  • The current renders do nothing to "open up the super block." The fact that this project does nothing to break up the nearly 800 feet of unbroken streetwall along Staniford means that the super block will remain, regardless of what they do to the plaza or slap on top of the existing building. At a bare minimum, they should punch a big, obvious, publicly accessible hole through the Hurley at Cardinal O'Connell Way to allow pedestrians to cut through without having to walk up to Cambridge or down to Merrimac.
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^in that light, it did not sneak past me that the primary view they are showing of the "plaza" is essentially one where the viewer's back is against a wall (the Lindemann). The render is misleading since it suggests a pedestrian flow into and through the plaza, but, alas unless I am missing something, the plaza is still a total dead end, and thus is unlikely to ever be filled with people as they are showing (unless they build an 800 unit residential tower and all of those people live there to begin with).
 
The compromise is building around it and covering up this mistake as much as possible. I do not want to keep it purely as a 1000 foot square monument to hubris.
I'm not a pure lover or hater of brutalism. I just know a building shouldn't hurt you when you lean on it, or accidently walk to close to it, or - honestly - look directly at it.
Any lover of the Hurley must concede that it has no redeeming street presence. It stands menacingly like a fascist bully ..and these days we don't need any more fascist bullies.
It is wholly unlovable. The Staniford Street side has all the charm of a loading dock, because it is, in fact, a loading dock.
On the Merrimac corner, you get a whimsical frog face, overlooking the Escher-esque stairs that have played host to more than a handful of suicides and overdoses. That corner at peak functionality, serves as a parking lot. That's it.
Hurley-Lindemann envelops the main tell of 60s overreach: a massive and murkily lit parking garage to whish suburban patrician lords to and from their bunker/office. This one is capped with dozens of liability tempting '20 drops no (thankfully?) covered by chainlink.
A testament to the failure? The people who get reserved parking inside would rather park outside!
The Hurley entrances aren't grand, either. I've seen prison doors I've liked more. They should be a feature, because everyone is looking for the exits!
It is a hulking symbol of an awful age where heroic projects were built on the backs of displaced uncompensated property owners.
If it was a person, I would have called the cops decades ago to have it hauled of to jail. If one were to exhume Robert Moses and open up his chest, his heart would look like this property.
As buildings go, we need something we can use, feel welcome around, or at least not be repelled. That's a buildings' job. This one is no damn good at anything.

Sometimes, buildings just fail. And that's okay. It's okay not want this one anymore.

There are plenty of other brutalist buildings that might be hideous but at least they work as buildings. City Hall... works... at least as an architectural metaphor for byzantine government process.
Save something else. Please. Don't stand in the way.
 
vanshnookenraggen said:
This is quite literally the worst thing that could happen. I've seen these facade-ectamies before and they are a slap in the face of architecture and historic preservation. It's the worst of both worlds. It also assumes that, in 2022, there is any serious architect that could replace this building with anything other than a jumbled mess of mediocrity.
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I have long thought the the trauma from urban renewal likely means it was the last interesting and original thing many places like Boston will do. I feel as though the ethos in places scarred by urban renewal is 'do no further harm' which means erring on the side of the existing condition even if its subpar or when new structures/urban forms are created, accepting the boring as safe rather than opting for the daring.
 
goody said:
I have long thought the the trauma from urban renewal likely means it was the last interesting and original thing many places like Boston will do. I feel as though the ethos in places scarred by urban renewal is 'do no further harm' which means erring on the side of the existing condition even if its subpar or when new structures/urban forms are created, accepting the boring as safe rather than opting for the daring.
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Why is it so hard to understand? Build nice looking stuff. A large percentage of daring designs fail - that's what makes them daring. Put that on a campus in the middle of nowhere or be daring with your own damn house, not when we all have to live with the consequences.
 
Equilibria said:
...A large percentage of daring designs fail - that's what makes them daring. Put that on a campus in the middle of nowhere or be daring with your own damn house, not when we all have to live with the consequences.
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I'm ok with daring designs in the peripheral skyline areas, around the 250'-350' levels. Two that come to mind are the new BU Science building and the Mass Art Treehouse dorm. What I don't want to see is a combination of underbuilt and crappy, in the heart of downtown, right near major train stations.
 
DZH22 said:
I'm ok with daring designs in the peripheral skyline areas, around the 250'-350' levels. Two that come to mind are the new BU Science building and the Mass Art Treehouse dorm. What I don't want to see is a combination of underbuilt and crappy, in the heart of downtown, right near major train stations.
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To be clear, we're all in agreement that this design blows. I'm not defending it at all. This is WHOOPS-level bad.
 
curcuas said:
Yes and no. Stewart Brand has an excellent dichotomy of buildings into "high road" of flexible, high concept architecture and "low road" of cheap, reusable, and easily replaceable buildings. The problem, as he details, is that starting around the early 20th century, the flexibility of traditional architectural forms allowing relatively easy reuse and adaptation of even the most high end buildings basically disappeared. This is very clear with buildings like City Hall and the Hurley. I agree we should reuse and build on historic buildings, that's tradition in the best way. The problem is these buildings that were designed to prevent any of that. We shouldn't build like that ever again and the cost of adaptation seems not at all worth the value here.
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I agree with the premise of the argument, but I also think that this specific case is more of a design challenge than simply a case of a building which cannot be reused.
 
vanshnookenraggen said:
So? That mean's I've been places that know how to do things differently than what you would otherwise know. It's called perspective.
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Having a wide variety of opinions and perspectives on something like this can be a good thing. However, the opinions and perspectives of those who frequently interact with the building and the neighborhood should matter more here than those who appreciate the architecture from afar, no?

Your post rubbed me the wrong way in the same way as did the letter from the Rudolph Fan Club that was mentioned a few posts earlier. It’s reminiscent to me of this scene in a funny movie:

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Yeah, except, if I may extend the premise of that meme, I DID go to that school and as an alumni, my opinion is just as valid as anyone still going to that school.
 
vanshnookenraggen said:
Yeah, except, if I may extend the premise of that meme, I DID go to that school and as an alumni, my opinion is just as valid as anyone still going to that school.
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Nonsense.

I graduated from two colleges. My opinions on what new structures are proposed to be developed on either campus are nowhere near as valid as those of current students, faculty, or staff.

If you don't live in Boston, your take on what goes up in Boston are not as valuable as those of current residents.
 
chrisbrat said:
If you don't live in Boston, your take on what goes up in Boston are not as valuable as those of current residents.
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This is an unbecoming set of replies and classic gatekeeping. Who cares if he lives here still? We here are not voting members of the BPDA and thus the 'validity' of our opinions is worth the registration fee we all paid to get on this forum. The only thing I'd call vanshnookenraggen out on is his unpronounceable handle.
 
It's not gatekeeping at all. Would you like it if some chuckleheads from California or Michigan tried to tell you how to landscape your front lawn or how best to paint your livingroom? Anyone can have an opinon (der), but *my* opinion on the new public HS in Arlington is infinitely less relevant than the opinion of a 15 year-old who has to go there, some chemistry teacher who has to try and teach those kids, or the dude whose house is across the street from the building. "Gatekeeping"?!?! That's just logic, reason, and common sense.
 
chrisbrat said:
It's not gatekeeping at all. Would you like it if some chuckleheads from California or Michigan tried to tell you how to landscape your front lawn or how best to paint your livingroom? Anyone can have an opinon (der), but *my* opinion on the new public HS in Arlington is infinitely less relevant than the opinion of a 15 year-old who has to go there, some chemistry teacher who has to try and teach those kids, or the dude whose house is across the street from the building. "Gatekeeping"?!?! That's just logic, reason, and common sense.
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The school analogy was a poor one to begin with. The city is for everyone, whether you live there, work there, used to live there, identify with it, etc. It stretches a lot further than your front lawn and the stakes of millions of different people have all been involved in turning it into what it is today. We don't have the "Chris Brat's Front Lawn Red Sox" because comparing your front lawn to the hub city of a 6 state region just doesn't apply.

As far as I'm concerned, everybody who cares enough just to be part of this forum has some kind of stake in the city. It's not my place to tell others what the city should or shouldn't mean to them.
 
This is clearly a "debate" that won't go much further, so I'll just end my own two-cents by trying (again) to differentiate between *anyone's* "right" to have an opinion about absolutely anything, to feel invested in a place, to feel that they have skin in any game -- regardless of place of residence, age, income, education level, or anything else -- and the greater value of those opinions belonging to the direct neighbors of said thing, place, game.

To extend your Red Sox analogy: of course, someone in Boothbay, Maine (or Winter Hill, Somerville or Arlington) can feel ownership and personal investment in the Sox and in Fenway Park, and in Boston, overall. That same someone can be super pro, ambivalent, or anti- the new MGM Music Hall at Fenway, too. Never said they couldn't or shouldn't.

The opinion of someone living on the corner of Boylston and Ipswich is, to me anyway, far more important regarding, say, the MGM Music Hall -- it's appearance, hours, operational procedure, etc. -- than the opinions of some armchair architecture nerd in Winter Hill or some skyscraper fan in Arlington Heights.

Opinions differ, I suppose.
 
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