The Boulevard (née The Times/Littlest Bar) | 110 Broad St | Downtown

It is just another cheap looking building similar to One Canal in the Bullfinch Triangle.

Here it is in all its squat ugliness:

24985491089_dfdba213c8_c.jpg
 
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Whew! Thank goodness they removed that multi-angled glass on the corner and replaced it with a simple, flat wall of glass without any character. Before this iteration it had that as its single redeemable quality.

This is what I'm referring to:
Old:
24989738859_77c03c7989_z.jpg

New:
24730648123_7d7f5fe2c9_c.jpg
 
Charlie_mta said:
It is just another cheap looking building similar to One Canal in the Bullfinch Triangle.

Here it is in all its squat ugliness:

24985491089_dfdba213c8_c.jpg
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Absolutely fucking brutal. And people around here bitch to no end about the height of towers as if a 100 foot differential really affects them and then lets utter shit shit like this get built in high profile locations.
 
What exactly does the Boston Civic Design Commission do? Clearly NOT critique bad architecture or improper building placement.
 
JeffDowntown said:
What exactly does the Boston Civic Design Commission do? Clearly NOT critique bad architecture or improper building placement.
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^JeffDowntown sums it up best.....WTF!, and WTF does BCDC actually do?
Amazing that these garbage buildings keep getting dumped on our streets!
 
lapradetom said:
^JeffDowntown sums it up best.....WTF!, and WTF does BCDC actually do?
Amazing that these garbage buildings keep getting dumped on our streets!
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This building looks like something that is ready to be torn down somewhere, and it hasn't even gone up yet!
 
Oof, lots of pitchforks. I'm personally okay with the new design and even though it's fairly short, I think it does a good enough job of continuing the street wall along the Greenway.

I'm also honestly not sure how much taller you could go with such a small footprint - maybe 5 more floors? Usually you start dealing with long queue times for elevators if you go much taller if you can't fit more shafts, right?

I'm okay with this and 55 India being infill sites (so long as I get my Zipcar locations back when they're finished). There are still plenty of parcels downtown to go big and tall. Now if only more developments around the area outside of downtown and especially within a 10-min walk from a rapid transit stop were this height...
 
DigitalSciGuy said:
Oof, lots of pitchforks. I'm personally okay with the new design and even though it's fairly short, I think it does a good enough job of continuing the street wall along the Greenway.

I'm also honestly not sure how much taller you could go with such a small footprint - maybe 5 more floors? Usually you start dealing with long queue times for elevators if you go much taller if you can't fit more shafts, right?

I'm okay with this and 55 India being infill sites (so long as I get my Zipcar locations back when they're finished). There are still plenty of parcels downtown to go big and tall. Now if only more developments around the area outside of downtown and especially within a 10-min walk from a rapid transit stop were this height...
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To me, it is not that the building is not taller.

It is the way the bait and switch in the design process have modified this proposal from a somewhat interesting structure on the Greenway (repeat positioned prominently on the Greenway) into a value engineered mess worthy of a 1950's college dorm.

Since we are clearly going for shoddy and tacky, why not add a couple of billboard on the side for good measure?
 
I wish it had some more interesting design features, but it's pretty clear to me they changed the design to contrast with 55 India next door (and thus why they include it in all their renders).
 
DigitalSciGuy said:
Oof, lots of pitchforks. I'm personally okay with the new design and even though it's fairly short, I think it does a good enough job of continuing the street wall along the Greenway.

I'm also honestly not sure how much taller you could go with such a small footprint - maybe 5 more floors? Usually you start dealing with long queue times for elevators if you go much taller if you can't fit more shafts, right?

I'm okay with this and 55 India being infill sites (so long as I get my Zipcar locations back when they're finished). There are still plenty of parcels downtown to go big and tall. Now if only more developments around the area outside of downtown and especially within a 10-min walk from a rapid transit stop were this height...
Click to expand...

My distaste for this development has absolutely nothing to do with its height.

They're tearing down a pre-war building and replacing it with cheap, cookie-cutter schlock. The city will be a worse place with this building than with what is there now. The existing building is nothing fantastic, but every time we lose buildings like it we lose a bit of what makes our city unique. That's not to say we should never tear anything old down -- sometimes it's the right move, all things considered, as we do need to grow -- but not when the replacement building is such garbage.
 
HalcyonEra said:
Absolutely fucking brutal. And people around here bitch to no end about the height of towers as if a 100 foot differential really affects them and then lets utter shit shit like this get built in high profile locations.
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^Looks like they ran out of money designing such a stunning structure. Maybe we can find a sale at Lowes or Home Depot on some cheap black shutters, so they'll have enough to do all the windows on that section missing about 40% of them. I may have a few in the shed, anyone else have a few lying around to donate to the cause?
 
I think the shutters are on the original Bulfinch and are meant to show the demarcation between the new and old.
 
Mike said:
Thanks, BeeLine. I'm looking forward to this one. Looks like there were a few small changes in the design compared to the earlier stuff posted on page 3.

http://faainc.com/projects/110-broad-street-boston/
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I'm looking forward to this one too. The negativity on here is astounding. I like the design, assuming that the renderings at the link posted by Mike above are accurate. If people would take the time to review them, I think they might see that the building has some interesting features.

Whew! Thank goodness they removed that multi-angled glass on the corner and replaced it with a simple, flat wall of glass without any character. Before this iteration it had that as its single redeemable quality.
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For example, the change in the glass wall that timsox6 complains about in the post above is in my opinion an improvement. As the rendering below shows, the glass plane on the corner angles out away from the building from the bottom up, in a reverse effect to that of Atlantic Wharf. I think that is going to look great.

110-Broad-Street-Finegold-Alexander-Architects-2.jpg
 
This is way too short for this location.
I'll take what we're getting.. its not that bad, but a sleek 350-400' tower on top of this would've improved this tenfold.
 
I don't disagree that a tall tower would be great here, but that was never in the cards for this location.
 
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