GrandMarc Residence Hall (YMCA) @ Northeastern U | 291 St. Botolph Street | Fenway

atlantaden said:
Building dorms in the city seems as difficult as building high in the city. Neighborhood after neighborhood screams and moans about the students living among them but whenever a school announces plans to build dorms, the same neighborhoods (BC, Northeastern, Suffolk as I remember all had to jump through hoops or drastically change building plans) scream bloody murder about height or location or numbers, etc. It's amazing to me.
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Clearly, this means that the colleges should be rebuilt as massive Pentagon-style landscrapers that are instead designed to keep the kids in rather than keep people out. Inside these collegiate Pentagons, there will be all the amenities, city services, lecture halls, and housing. The roofs would have all the green space required for sports and recreation. Each Pentagon would be connected to each other by a duplicate subway but only for the colleges, like the US Capitol Subway.

I'm sure they'd like that better than 20-30-storey dorm towers. I mean, it addresses the height issue and gets the kids out of their neighbourhoods!
 
Speare Hall is 50 years old this year. Stetson's only 2 years younger. I know they've been renovated recently on the inside, but...

Well, they sure could be taller.
 
Roosevelt University has the right idea.

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KentXie said:
Roosevelt University has the right idea.

6401109105_b549b566b8_z.jpg
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Boy I wish, though Chicago has never really been height averse. We'd need to have a larger base of younger, less height averse property owners willing to go to bat for the developers willing to go tall before we can do anything like this. I really wish we could outlaw the phrase 'detract from the neighbourhood character' to describe a tall building blocks away.

In any case, wasn't the original plan for the GrandMarc to be about as tall as this Roosevelt University building?
 
The original plan is about 100 feet shorter than the Roosevelt University tower.
 
I'm convinced you could take a picture of dog poop and somehow make it look good.

The silver is defintiely a saving grace from that angle.
 
I prefer Waterside Plane to this heap for sure. Color and location/prominence work against this one.
 
It's almost worse than Waterside Place. Both buildings look pretty dumb.
 
Something about this building in those last few shots screams "hospital" to me.
 
datadyne007 said:
Well, she's large and here to stay...


Symphony Hall and Huntington Ave from Pru by datadyne007, on Flickr
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Datadyne, I looked through your newest pics on flickr and you had a few really good ones from up there. It's amazing to see how much of a difference these new buildings make looking towards Fenway/Longwood.

That being said, this pic illustrates yet one more reason why this building is horrible. The crappy grey part doesn't even extend to the ground! It hits orange floors again right around the height of the YMCA. This is hidden from ground level, but appalling from above. One more terrible feature on a terrible looking building!
 
That facade looks like an 'oops'. Like like to hear the architect explain the design.
 
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