City Hall Plaza Revamp | Government Center

[statler]

Re: Official City Hall Plaza Proposals

Just guessing, but HUBweek is in two/three weeks.

A quick google search tells me you are correct. Thanks.

 

[Hufer]

Re: Official City Hall Plaza Proposals

The space in that picture would be fine if they knocked down City Hall.

Indeed.

I've always stated in order to fix City Hall Plaza there are only 2 options: Get rid of City Hall & integrate the plaza with Quincy Market with an ambitious Urban Landscape design OR Get Rid of City Hall & The Plaza all together and redevelop the whole god damn thing over

can't have it both ways!!

 

[Padre Mike]

Re: Official City Hall Plaza Proposals

It's too bad when they built city hall because they thought of the plaza as an imitation of St. Peter's Square, with the basilica as a backdrop to a vast open space. Yet how does that space work? There's a Pope who gathers pilgrims on a regular basis. No amenities, one bathroom, no shops on the plaza, no food. Just a pope. Instead Boston's plazas have to be more like Piazza Navona: fountains, food, shops, places to sit and hang around, music and defined borders. I agree that all that's needed here are defined borders with lots of affordable shops and food places, along with other retail, small businesses, and offices, with the city hall as a backdrop. I've often wanted to open up the brick areas to retail and use the entire lower floors therein. Of course with all the trees they'll not be able to gather huge crowds for rally's etc., unless they want the landscaping to be trampled underfoot. The plan seems like an expensive nightmare to maintain properly...like Copley Square that's had to replace nearly all its trees after only a couple of decades.

 

[statler]

Re: Official City Hall Plaza Proposals

I sort of get how selling (or even leasing) the "open, public space' around the edge of CHP would be a political nightmare. But if they could somehow order up some rendering showing people how it would look and work, I wonder if they could gin up enough political will to make it happen?

 

[JumboBuc]

Re: Official City Hall Plaza Proposals

I sort of get how selling (or even leasing) the "open, public space' around the edge of CHP would be a political nightmare. But if they could somehow order up some rendering showing people how it would look and work, I wonder if they could gin up enough political will to make it happen?

I dunno if building and leasing out space would be that much of a politcal nightmare, if done appropriately. The whole "Boston Seasons at City Hall Plaza" does, in effect, lease out CHP space for retail and entertainment use, and it's super popular and widely supported. I'd believe that year-round small-to-medium-scale retail buildings (think the small stuff along the main drag of Assembly Row) surrounding the perimeter of the plaza could fly with the public.

Also, retail along the Congress St brick wall frontage of City Hall itself is a total no-brainer.

 

[BronsonShore]

Re: Official City Hall Plaza Proposals

It's too bad when they built city hall because they thought of the plaza as an imitation of St. Peter's Square, with the basilica as a backdrop to a vast open space. Yet how does that space work? There's a Pope who gathers pilgrims on a regular basis. No amenities, one bathroom, no shops on the plaza, no food. Just a pope. Instead Boston's plazas have to be more like Piazza Navona: fountains, food, shops, places to sit and hang around, music and defined borders. I agree that all that's needed here are defined borders with lots of affordable shops and food places, along with other retail, small businesses, and offices, with the city hall as a backdrop. I've often wanted to open up the brick areas to retail and use the entire lower floors therein. Of course with all the trees they'll not be able to gather huge crowds for rally's etc., unless they want the landscaping to be trampled underfoot. The plan seems like an expensive nightmare to maintain properly...like Copley Square that's had to replace nearly all its trees after only a couple of decades.

Your history's a little off, I think. I'm pretty sure they were going for Piazza del Camp in Sienna:

You are, or course, exactly right about everything else it needs, defined borders in particular.

 

[DBM]

Re: Official City Hall Plaza Proposals

https://slate.com/business/2018/09/robert-venturi-architect-las-vegas-lessons-obituary.html

Opening paragraph [for any tl, dr types out there]:

Robert Venturi did not like Boston City Hall. “It’s all a big symbol, though it won’t admit it,” the architect told writer Paul Goldberger in 1971 of the hated Brutalist landmark that opened in 1968. “How ridiculous —trying to make a piazza publico, like an Italian city‐state! If they really wanted to make it so monumental, they should have built a plain loft building and put a sign up top saying, ‘I Am a Monument.’ That would have been appropriate to today’s American city.”

It was not an idle proposal. Previously, perhaps joking a little, he had written that the very concept of the plaza was un-American. “Americans feel uncomfortable sitting in a square,” he wrote. “They should be working at the office or home with the family looking at television.” The next year Learning From Las Vegas, the book that made him as famous as an architecture theorist could be, included just such a sketch of a building and its sign, labeled “recommendation for a monument.”

 

[odurandina]

Re: Official City Hall Plaza Proposals

That's pretty apt. The most atrocious thing; is that so-called smart people designed it and others of this ilk allowed it to be built. People can argue about it being among the worst buildings in the United States, or the Western Hemisphere or whatever. But it stands near the top of the worst god damned important buildings in the world–period. For a host of reasons it's one of several extremely lousy buildings we appear to be stuck with–which itself is a tragedy because we have such a small central core to go with so much atrocious zoning. Land in Boston's core is a far too rare commodity to continue to entertain the demons from a drunken weekend 5 decades ago--yet that is exactly what we are doing..... Is it really any less uncomplicated than that?

 

[DBM]

Re: Official City Hall Plaza Proposals

That's pretty apt. The most atrocious thing; is that so-called smart people designed it and others of this ilk allowed it to be built. People can argue about it being among the worst buildings in the United States, or the Western Hemisphere or whatever. But it stands near the top of the worst god damned important buildings in the world–period. For a host of reasons it's one of several extremely lousy buildings we appear to be stuck with–which itself is a tragedy because we have such a small central core to go with so much atrocious zoning. Land in Boston's core is a far too rare commodity to continue to entertain the demons from a drunken weekend 5 decades ago--yet that is exactly what we are doing..... Is it really any less uncomplicated than that?

Your "so-called smart people... allowed it to be built" is haunting but also incomplete. I would argue that the ongoing tragic-comedy that is City Hall/Government Center Plaza was practically preordained in the sense that it emerged from the (literal) rubble of the Scollay Sq. demolition. Nothing good could have emerged from that wasteland--it was just too many acres, cauterized from the organic surrounding cityscape by the demolition.

The contrast with Old City Hall couldn't be more sharp and telling. Old City Hall has a grand plaza--but it's also shoehorned into the tight fabric of School St. It emerged organically (well, as much as any government institution can be organic), from the natural processes of urban growth/development patterns in a hyperdense environment such as post-Civil War Downtown Crossing.

But what's truly appalling about City Hall/Government Center Plaza in terms of your "smart people" comment isn't actually that it was "born in sin" from the demolition of Scollay Square. It's that its particular style of monumentalism--which seems to be very different from the Vegas-style monumentalism that Robert Venturi championed (if I'm understanding him correctly)--should have been permanently discredited in the wake of the collapse of the Third Reich.

Hitler's and Albert Speer's plans for "Germania"--the monumental Berlin to arise from the ashes of a victory--were incredibly well documented. They were the perfect visual record of Hitler's megalomania and thus were widely disseminated in Western media, post-WWII.

So why did Boston end up with a little piece of Germania? I don't say this for hyperbolic/provocative effect. It's a sincere question.

(Note: if it happened in other cities too, after WWII, I don't mean to single Boston out.)

 

[Charlie_mta]

Re: Official City Hall Plaza Proposals

So why did Boston end up with a little piece of Germania? I don't say this for hyperbolic/provocative effect. It's a sincere question.

(Note: if it happened in other cities too, after WWII, I don't mean to single Boston out.)

I think Government Center and Charles River Park happened for these reasons:

- Federal urban renewal funding at the time encouraged these huge megablock projects, blitzing entire sectors of the city rather than surgical small-plot urban renewal;

- The bombing and leveling of European cities in WWII set a precedent, an expectation that, hey, that's a good way to shuffle the deck and make a clean start in a decaying city core;

- The ongoing threat of worldwide nuclear annihilation (enlarged by the Cuban missile crisis) set the paradigm for massive, heroic, and brutalistic developments in American cities; a paradigm that says, there is no history, and probably no tomorrow. That is basically what this time period was like, as I recall.

These are all my take, my observations from growing up in the 1960's and following Boston urban renewal as it was being planned and built at the time.

 

[Boston02124]

Re: Official City Hall Plaza Proposals

As someone who grew up in that same era I do identify with what you just wrote ^well said!

 

[Padre Mike]

Re: Official City Hall Plaza Proposals

Your history's a little off, I think. I'm pretty sure they were going for Piazza del Camp in Sienna:

You are, or course, exactly right about everything else it needs, defined borders in particular.

I was thinking of Siena as well, but chose Piazza Navona because of the mixed use around it. It used to be a racing stadium. But your illustration of Siena is much more apt.

 

[tobyjug]

Re: Official City Hall Plaza Proposals

So why did Boston end up with a little piece of Germania? I don't say this for hyperbolic/provocative effect. It's a sincere question.

Don't think Germania is a good comparison. Speer was Haussmannian in his street layout (Neronian if you prefer), but suffers from preposterous giantism. Even EUR is superior, if you want to stick with the totalitarian theme.

This is different, and suffers from a lack of classical framing and bad topography. City Hall is a gem of its sort, and like any jeweler will tell you, you can diminish the stone with an inferior setting.

 

[DBM]

Re: Official City Hall Plaza Proposals

Don't think Germania is a good comparison. Speer was Haussmannian in his street layout (Neronian if you prefer), but suffers from preposterous giantism. Even EUR is superior, if you want to stick with the totalitarian theme.

This is different, and suffers from a lack of classical framing and bad topography. City Hall is a gem of its sort, and like any jeweler will tell you, you can diminish the stone with an inferior setting.

Thank you for placing Speer within the proper genealogical framework; I'm certainly aware of Haussmann. But what's EUR?

 

[DowntownDave]

Re: Official City Hall Plaza Proposals

Esposizione Universale Roma

 

[JeffDowntown]

Re: Official City Hall Plaza Proposals

Thank you for placing Speer within the proper genealogical framework; I'm certainly aware of Haussmann. But what's EUR?

EUR = Esposizione Universale Roma -- Mussolini's grand business/residential district just south of central Rome, planned for the 1942 world's fair (that never happened).

 

[tobyjug]

Re: Official City Hall Plaza Proposals

St Louis residents would certainly recognize what was to be EUR's most prominent feature. Saarinen cribbed his design from the unbuilt EUR arch, meaning the great "Gateway" monument to European westward expansion across this continent is actually a fascist monument.

 

[DBM]

Re: Official City Hall Plaza Proposals

St Louis residents would certainly recognize what was to be EUR's most prominent feature. Saarinen cribbed his design from the unbuilt EUR arch, meaning the great "Gateway" monument to European westward expansion across this continent is actually a fascist monument.

"In 1928, Hitler remarked, approvingly, that white settlers in America had 'gunned down the millions of redskins to a few hundred thousand.' When he spoke of Lebensraum, the German drive for 'living space' in Eastern Europe, he often had America in mind.

Source: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/04/30/how-american-racism-influenced-hitler

 

[tangent]

Re: Official City Hall Plaza Proposals

"In 1928, Hitler remarked, approvingly, that white settlers in America had 'gunned down the millions of redskins to a few hundred thousand.' When he spoke of Lebensraum, the German drive for 'living space' in Eastern Europe, he often had America in mind.

Source: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/04/30/how-american-racism-influenced-hitler

I hereby invoke Godwin's Law and corollaries.

Therefore City Hall should be preserved.

 

[statler]

Re: Official City Hall Plaza Proposals

The Globe seems to be burying the lede here.

So in this article they say:

Testing of the plaza’s infrastructure will begin in the fall and last through the winter and mostly be confined to the plaza’s north side.
But it will affect large scale events planned for that area, including, the city confirmed, Boston Winter, “as the city commences extensive destructive testing and prepares for construction in 2019.”

Has anyone seen any kind of testing work being done on the plaza yet that would have required them to cancel the holiday market?