Millennium Tower (Filene's) | 426 Washington Street | Downtown
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Re: Filene's
yeah, yeah, the santayana line: "those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it."
but if we are to learn from our mistakes in this case and leave a lasting urban solution in the west end, what is the proper lesson to draw:
that neighborhoods that have fallen out of favor should never, ever be rethought and rebuilt;
or that the sort of high-density environment that formed organically over centuries is, in the long run, a more sustainable model for the center of boston than the huge deserts of car-reliant, pedestrian-excluding concrete, grass and hideous brutalism and modernism that was fashionable among BRA goombahs in the '60s?
in this case, i would argue that learning from our mistakes means taking down charles river park, the tip o'neil building and most of government center before they can be declared historic sites ))
yeah, yeah, the santayana line: "those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it."
but if we are to learn from our mistakes in this case and leave a lasting urban solution in the west end, what is the proper lesson to draw:
that neighborhoods that have fallen out of favor should never, ever be rethought and rebuilt;
or that the sort of high-density environment that formed organically over centuries is, in the long run, a more sustainable model for the center of boston than the huge deserts of car-reliant, pedestrian-excluding concrete, grass and hideous brutalism and modernism that was fashionable among BRA goombahs in the '60s?
in this case, i would argue that learning from our mistakes means taking down charles river park, the tip o'neil building and most of government center before they can be declared historic sites ))
Re: Filene's
That's the lesson.
Another lesson to learn is telling the wheat from the chaff. Your first two examples are chaff; taking down City Hall would in time be seen as a big mistake --like taking down the West End or Penn Station.
czsz
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Re: Filene's
Why not take a stance against both the tabula rasa thinking of midcentury planning and its subsequent prescriptions? Why not preserve what exists while filling in the gaps intelligently? Let's face it, Boston hasn't built a decent neighborhood from scratch since the turn of the 20th century. Even the New Urbanism-inspired HOPE VI developments in Roxbury appear more sterile and suburban than their tower block predecessors. What exists in the West End can be integrated into a cityscape we can all come to appreciate; all it requires is time, rather than a magic wand.
Why not take a stance against both the tabula rasa thinking of midcentury planning and its subsequent prescriptions? Why not preserve what exists while filling in the gaps intelligently? Let's face it, Boston hasn't built a decent neighborhood from scratch since the turn of the 20th century. Even the New Urbanism-inspired HOPE VI developments in Roxbury appear more sterile and suburban than their tower block predecessors. What exists in the West End can be integrated into a cityscape we can all come to appreciate; all it requires is time, rather than a magic wand.
Re: Filene's
Much as I respect the feeling and admiration that so many architects have for City Hall, I don't know if it's analogous to the West End or Penn Station. Like so many other modernist works, City Hall succeeds as urban sculpture but dreadfully fails the people it is meant to serve. Conversely, "the people" loved Penn Station and the West End- (I am referring to those who experienced Penn Station as a palace of the people, and those who lived in the West End as portrayed by Herbert Gans).
Much as I respect the feeling and admiration that so many architects have for City Hall, I don't know if it's analogous to the West End or Penn Station. Like so many other modernist works, City Hall succeeds as urban sculpture but dreadfully fails the people it is meant to serve. Conversely, "the people" loved Penn Station and the West End- (I am referring to those who experienced Penn Station as a palace of the people, and those who lived in the West End as portrayed by Herbert Gans).
Re: Filene's
But does City Hall really work as urban sculpture?
Although I personally find City Hall hideous, I agree that it would be good to leave it standing, if only to build around and over it and leave some misbegotten chunk of that era in place. But almost everything else in the federally funded disaster that is Government Center would be best done away with. The buildings there could possibly be reworked into a street pattern, but given their girth and odd shapes and angles, that would be a formidable challenge. And fully renovating City Hall and its kin and finding a way to fit them into a functioning neighborhood would probably be difficult, expensive and unprofitable. As much as it could be interesting and quirky to keep City Hall around and integrate it into an actual neighborhood built around it, would it be possible? Which would be preferable -- having a neighborhood, hopefully with diverse, small buildings, where people can actually live and work; or leaving the current black hole at the city's center? I'd say the former but of course any attempt to master-plan anything is generally a mess...
But does City Hall really work as urban sculpture?
Although I personally find City Hall hideous, I agree that it would be good to leave it standing, if only to build around and over it and leave some misbegotten chunk of that era in place. But almost everything else in the federally funded disaster that is Government Center would be best done away with. The buildings there could possibly be reworked into a street pattern, but given their girth and odd shapes and angles, that would be a formidable challenge. And fully renovating City Hall and its kin and finding a way to fit them into a functioning neighborhood would probably be difficult, expensive and unprofitable. As much as it could be interesting and quirky to keep City Hall around and integrate it into an actual neighborhood built around it, would it be possible? Which would be preferable -- having a neighborhood, hopefully with diverse, small buildings, where people can actually live and work; or leaving the current black hole at the city's center? I'd say the former but of course any attempt to master-plan anything is generally a mess...
Ron Newman
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Re: Filene's
If it "work(s) as urban sculpture", it would be on picture postcards that are sold to tourists. I can't remember ever seeing it on such a postcard.
The tourists aren't averse to modernism; you'll find plenty of postcards featuring the Hancock Tower.
If it "work(s) as urban sculpture", it would be on picture postcards that are sold to tourists. I can't remember ever seeing it on such a postcard.
The tourists aren't averse to modernism; you'll find plenty of postcards featuring the Hancock Tower.
statler
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Re: Filene's
You guys seem to be lost.
This is the Filene's thread.
The City Hall thread is two doors down, take a left.
You guys seem to be lost.
This is the Filene's thread.
The City Hall thread is two doors down, take a left.
Re: Filene's
The West End may have functioned as a community, but it was a community of the deprived. And Penn Station was perceived as dirty, dysfunctional and obsolete. They were both thought ugly. (Strange to contemplate the truth of this through our current rose-colored glasses.)
OF COURSE: today we would know what to do with these places if they still existed. The wisdom of hindsight.
In truth, neither were the West End and Penn Station; we've concocted a mythology about how much those places were loved.
The West End may have functioned as a community, but it was a community of the deprived. And Penn Station was perceived as dirty, dysfunctional and obsolete. They were both thought ugly. (Strange to contemplate the truth of this through our current rose-colored glasses.)
OF COURSE: today we would know what to do with these places if they still existed. The wisdom of hindsight.
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Re: Filene's
Bah! This new software won't let me move posts. I'll do it when I figure out how.
Bah! This new software won't let me move posts. I'll do it when I figure out how.
Re: Filene's
It's not simply rose colored nostalgia that informed the statement I made earlier. While it is true that the pundits of the time widely thought of places like the West End as a slum, by most accounts the same sentiment did not motivate the destruction of Penn Station. Although I'm sure the argument that it was "dirty" was surely made by those who would profit from Penn Station's destruction, most people understood that Penn Station was destroyed not because it was unloved, but as a result of its financial shortcomings.
"A point made in the defense of the demolition of the old Penn Station at the time was that the cost of maintaining the old structure had become prohibitively expensive. The citizens of New York City were unwilling to shoulder the costs of maintaining and cleaning their beloved station. The question of whether it made sense to preserve a building, intended to be a cost-effective and functional piece of the city's infrastructure, simply as a "monument" to the past was raised in defense of the plans to demolish it. As a New York Times editorial critical of the demolition noted at the time, a "civilization gets what it wants, is willing to pay for, and ultimately deserves". An easy-to-maintain "modern" slab was precisely what the "city that never sleeps" was after." (Wikipedia)
It's not simply rose colored nostalgia that informed the statement I made earlier. While it is true that the pundits of the time widely thought of places like the West End as a slum, by most accounts the same sentiment did not motivate the destruction of Penn Station. Although I'm sure the argument that it was "dirty" was surely made by those who would profit from Penn Station's destruction, most people understood that Penn Station was destroyed not because it was unloved, but as a result of its financial shortcomings.
"A point made in the defense of the demolition of the old Penn Station at the time was that the cost of maintaining the old structure had become prohibitively expensive. The citizens of New York City were unwilling to shoulder the costs of maintaining and cleaning their beloved station. The question of whether it made sense to preserve a building, intended to be a cost-effective and functional piece of the city's infrastructure, simply as a "monument" to the past was raised in defense of the plans to demolish it. As a New York Times editorial critical of the demolition noted at the time, a "civilization gets what it wants, is willing to pay for, and ultimately deserves". An easy-to-maintain "modern" slab was precisely what the "city that never sleeps" was after." (Wikipedia)
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Re: Filene's
Assuming for a second that the NYTimes editorial was not reflective of popular sentiment, and that the preservationist movement that quickly emerged after the destruction of Penn Station was not tied to any popular love of the structure, what do you base your position upon?
Assuming for a second that the NYTimes editorial was not reflective of popular sentiment, and that the preservationist movement that quickly emerged after the destruction of Penn Station was not tied to any popular love of the structure, what do you base your position upon?
Re: Penn Station Demo
^ Being there.
Living in New York, I walked by this monstrous act of vandalism daily on my routine. Being young and naive and ignorant of architectural theories, I couldn't understand why no one was upset, why there were no demonstrations, why such a beautiful and impressive (though admittedly dirty) old thing was being destroyed in this way. I guess I understood most folks hated these old "monstrosities" so redolent of backwardness in a forward-looking age, but I didn't share their view.
"All it needs is a cleaning," I thought hopefully, "after they take it all apart, they'll steam clean it and put it back together again." People I mentioned this to thought I was crazy: "That ugly ol' pile: good riddance, we can replace it with something clean and modern." I looked in the papers and they mostly saw it as a sign of progress.
At the same time, I watched them take down the Singer Building, the Savoy Plaza, the Astor Hotel and the skin of the old Times Building --much of the creme of New York's Beaux-Arts architecture. Thank God they didn't get around to Grand Central, Woolworth and Metropolitan Life.
Though a few preservationists existed, they were thought to be crackpots like me.
As time passed, preservationism gathered steam and Beaux-Arts architecture regained popularity. To my amusement, more and more folks came out of the woodwork to claim retroactively to have been appalled at Penn Station?s destruction. Where were they when it was happening? Times and tastes had changed, that?s all, and folks always want to be on the popular side.
Even Vincent Scully was a bit of a Johnny-come-lately. Echoing Modernism?s prevailing view, he saw Penn Station as unoriginal pastiche. His repentance came with the ?scurry in like a rat? comment. But the truth is, Beaux-Arts and Deco buildings weren?t even thought to be architecture by the Modernists; they were just buildings. You looked in vain for them in that day?s definitive tome of architectural history, Siegfried Giedion?s Space, Time and Architecture.
Now I?m seeing the exact same phenomenon repeated with Boston City Hall and the works of Rudolph and Sert.
Posted on Wired New Yorkhttp:
//www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=7009 :
Originally posted by ablarc
SIXTIES DEMOLITIONS
Pennsylvania Station (1910-64).
In the early and mid-Sixties, prolonged insanity unleashed onto New York?s great Beaux-Arts monuments an orgy of architectural vandalism. Poster boys for this exhibition of looniness have come to be Penn Station and the Singer Building, both barely over fifty when they bit the dust.
Singer Building (1906-68).
Times Square?s Hotel Astor and the New York Times Building?s fanciful skin had also passed the fifty-year mark:
Times Square: The New York Times Tower (1903-65) and the Hotel Astor beyond (with flag).
The Hotel Astor (1904-67)
The Astor was impossibly vast and French: three stories of space in its mansard alone.
A building?s golden anniversary generally finds owners and public alike with thoughts of demolition; starting really at about age forty, when its style has gone out of vogue, a building?s most in danger of being murdered (or as in the case of the New York Times Building, merely flayed). At that age, a building?s generally dirty, old-fashioned, boring and obsolete (like 2 Columbus Center, presently being flayed). If it can survive to seventy it becomes ?historic,? we scrub it squeaky clean and save it for posterity.
Because the Sixties? callous demolitions now so appall us, we assume they occurred amidst vigorous protests such as you?d see today, now that we?ve re-learned to value Beaux-Arts buildings. But truth is, there was only a smattering of complaint over Penn Station, and almost none of it came from architects (in spite of what their revisionist apologists now claim).
At the time, everybody could see these buildings were obsolete, worn out and ugly; they weren?t shiny, new, functional, clean or modern. They were everything a modern architect hated. The clean, new Seagram Building (1958) and Chase-Manhattan (1960) had just sprung up to point the way; and the public had finally cottoned to the message of International Style Modernism. Progressive and forward-looking, they couldn?t wait to get more.
There were, however, these grimy, old-fashioned, obsolete buildings in the way, reminders of the benighted past, full of stuffy Victorians and Colonel Blowhards; each one was replaced with something sparkling, simple and modern.
Penn Station was replaced by a sparkling new Madison Square Garden and an office slab, which together formed a corpulent, squared-up paraphrase of trylon and perisphere:
Forty years old, they no longer sparkle. Obsolete, worn out and ugly, they?re no longer shiny, new, functional, clean or modern. The owners contemplate their replacement, and the public hopes for it. Will we miss them after they?re gone?
The Singer Building was replaced by the bronzetone banality of U.S. Steel?s tower, product of the International Style?s premier practitioners, SOM:
As the Allied Chemical Building, the Times? tired old tower was reskinned in glitzy marble and billboards:
And the dowdy old Astor was supplanted by the latest thing: you could tell, because it actually had fins! Like a DeSoto:
Astor Plaza.
Right now, we?re hard at work trashing monuments of Modernism, Brutalism and Post-Modernism; 2 Columbus Circle?s an example, and the U.N. Building had better watch out if it wants to keep its Modernist character; Sert?s Roosevelt Island ziggurats have already had their cheerful little bursts of color stripped. In Boston, you can hear daily calls to bulldoze that city?s iconic City Hall, high temple of Brutalism.
The Savoy-Plaza (1927-64, McKim, Meade and White) bit the dust along with its Beaux-Arts brethren, and it was in many ways their peer. It spoke with an ever-so-faint Deco accent, but because it was at the tail end of a style that had fallen out of fashion it never quite made it to forty.
The Savoy-Plaza.
In one respect Savoy-Plaza actually bested its peers, for it made sweet music with its neighbors, Sherry Netherland and the venerable Plaza. As the ?Grand? in Grand Army Plaza, cello-like Savoy emitted staunchly rotund tones, while slender Sherry played an agile fiddle, and the Plaza mediated, viola-like. They were all French, this trio, in their jaunty green hats, and they were all hotels. Together in this most European corner of the park, they oozed plutocratic elegance:
Savoy was the same age as Sherry; they were both born in 1927, but while Savoy died an early death Sherry survived to become historic, and Plaza (born 1909) is not just historic but, at nearly a hundred, well on the way to a comfortable immortality.
They provided New York with perhaps its finest urban composition not actually conceived entire?as Rockefeller Center was?but piecemeal like the Piazza San Marco. A collaboration by architects over time.
Here in this stretch of Fifth Avenue, even the supporting cast was French; hovering at the trio?s outskirts in some views, Pierre, also a hotel in a green hat, sometimes joined in to make a quartet:
Pierre?s the tower at left.
A 1927 aerial shows roof work on the Plaza, and Savoy and Sherry Netherland unstarted. It also shows the still residential expanse of the Forties and Fifties between Fifth and Sixth, soon to be swept aside for Rockefeller Center. This was the start of the mother of all building booms; it was after all the Roaring Twenties:
Spot the Sixth Avenue El as it plunges under ground. Mansions lined Fifth Avenue immediately above the Plaza.
By the early Sixties, the Savoy Plaza had grown long in the tooth. It was replaced by the banal bulk of General Motors, Edward Durrell Stone?s white marble paraphrase of Hood?s Daily News grafted to a tepid rendition of Seagram?s massing. The music stopped. No one could harmonize with the new big guy; he was playing the kazoo.
Some members of that old French gang still loiter around la Grande Armee?s Place, but they?re completely cowed by GM; Sherry hovers wraith-like in the shadow, barely visible:
There was another, roughly contemporary but much smaller white marble building by Stone at the Park?s opposite, Southern corner; that?s the one to have kept and this is the one to lose.
^ Being there.
Living in New York, I walked by this monstrous act of vandalism daily on my routine. Being young and naive and ignorant of architectural theories, I couldn't understand why no one was upset, why there were no demonstrations, why such a beautiful and impressive (though admittedly dirty) old thing was being destroyed in this way. I guess I understood most folks hated these old "monstrosities" so redolent of backwardness in a forward-looking age, but I didn't share their view.
"All it needs is a cleaning," I thought hopefully, "after they take it all apart, they'll steam clean it and put it back together again." People I mentioned this to thought I was crazy: "That ugly ol' pile: good riddance, we can replace it with something clean and modern." I looked in the papers and they mostly saw it as a sign of progress.
At the same time, I watched them take down the Singer Building, the Savoy Plaza, the Astor Hotel and the skin of the old Times Building --much of the creme of New York's Beaux-Arts architecture. Thank God they didn't get around to Grand Central, Woolworth and Metropolitan Life.
Though a few preservationists existed, they were thought to be crackpots like me.
As time passed, preservationism gathered steam and Beaux-Arts architecture regained popularity. To my amusement, more and more folks came out of the woodwork to claim retroactively to have been appalled at Penn Station?s destruction. Where were they when it was happening? Times and tastes had changed, that?s all, and folks always want to be on the popular side.
Even Vincent Scully was a bit of a Johnny-come-lately. Echoing Modernism?s prevailing view, he saw Penn Station as unoriginal pastiche. His repentance came with the ?scurry in like a rat? comment. But the truth is, Beaux-Arts and Deco buildings weren?t even thought to be architecture by the Modernists; they were just buildings. You looked in vain for them in that day?s definitive tome of architectural history, Siegfried Giedion?s Space, Time and Architecture.
Now I?m seeing the exact same phenomenon repeated with Boston City Hall and the works of Rudolph and Sert.
Posted on Wired New Yorkhttp:
//www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=7009 :
Originally posted by ablarc
SIXTIES DEMOLITIONS
Pennsylvania Station (1910-64).
In the early and mid-Sixties, prolonged insanity unleashed onto New York?s great Beaux-Arts monuments an orgy of architectural vandalism. Poster boys for this exhibition of looniness have come to be Penn Station and the Singer Building, both barely over fifty when they bit the dust.
Singer Building (1906-68).
Times Square?s Hotel Astor and the New York Times Building?s fanciful skin had also passed the fifty-year mark:
Times Square: The New York Times Tower (1903-65) and the Hotel Astor beyond (with flag).
The Hotel Astor (1904-67)
The Astor was impossibly vast and French: three stories of space in its mansard alone.
A building?s golden anniversary generally finds owners and public alike with thoughts of demolition; starting really at about age forty, when its style has gone out of vogue, a building?s most in danger of being murdered (or as in the case of the New York Times Building, merely flayed). At that age, a building?s generally dirty, old-fashioned, boring and obsolete (like 2 Columbus Center, presently being flayed). If it can survive to seventy it becomes ?historic,? we scrub it squeaky clean and save it for posterity.
Because the Sixties? callous demolitions now so appall us, we assume they occurred amidst vigorous protests such as you?d see today, now that we?ve re-learned to value Beaux-Arts buildings. But truth is, there was only a smattering of complaint over Penn Station, and almost none of it came from architects (in spite of what their revisionist apologists now claim).
At the time, everybody could see these buildings were obsolete, worn out and ugly; they weren?t shiny, new, functional, clean or modern. They were everything a modern architect hated. The clean, new Seagram Building (1958) and Chase-Manhattan (1960) had just sprung up to point the way; and the public had finally cottoned to the message of International Style Modernism. Progressive and forward-looking, they couldn?t wait to get more.
There were, however, these grimy, old-fashioned, obsolete buildings in the way, reminders of the benighted past, full of stuffy Victorians and Colonel Blowhards; each one was replaced with something sparkling, simple and modern.
Penn Station was replaced by a sparkling new Madison Square Garden and an office slab, which together formed a corpulent, squared-up paraphrase of trylon and perisphere:
Forty years old, they no longer sparkle. Obsolete, worn out and ugly, they?re no longer shiny, new, functional, clean or modern. The owners contemplate their replacement, and the public hopes for it. Will we miss them after they?re gone?
The Singer Building was replaced by the bronzetone banality of U.S. Steel?s tower, product of the International Style?s premier practitioners, SOM:
As the Allied Chemical Building, the Times? tired old tower was reskinned in glitzy marble and billboards:
And the dowdy old Astor was supplanted by the latest thing: you could tell, because it actually had fins! Like a DeSoto:
Astor Plaza.
Right now, we?re hard at work trashing monuments of Modernism, Brutalism and Post-Modernism; 2 Columbus Circle?s an example, and the U.N. Building had better watch out if it wants to keep its Modernist character; Sert?s Roosevelt Island ziggurats have already had their cheerful little bursts of color stripped. In Boston, you can hear daily calls to bulldoze that city?s iconic City Hall, high temple of Brutalism.
The Savoy-Plaza (1927-64, McKim, Meade and White) bit the dust along with its Beaux-Arts brethren, and it was in many ways their peer. It spoke with an ever-so-faint Deco accent, but because it was at the tail end of a style that had fallen out of fashion it never quite made it to forty.
The Savoy-Plaza.
In one respect Savoy-Plaza actually bested its peers, for it made sweet music with its neighbors, Sherry Netherland and the venerable Plaza. As the ?Grand? in Grand Army Plaza, cello-like Savoy emitted staunchly rotund tones, while slender Sherry played an agile fiddle, and the Plaza mediated, viola-like. They were all French, this trio, in their jaunty green hats, and they were all hotels. Together in this most European corner of the park, they oozed plutocratic elegance:
Savoy was the same age as Sherry; they were both born in 1927, but while Savoy died an early death Sherry survived to become historic, and Plaza (born 1909) is not just historic but, at nearly a hundred, well on the way to a comfortable immortality.
They provided New York with perhaps its finest urban composition not actually conceived entire?as Rockefeller Center was?but piecemeal like the Piazza San Marco. A collaboration by architects over time.
Here in this stretch of Fifth Avenue, even the supporting cast was French; hovering at the trio?s outskirts in some views, Pierre, also a hotel in a green hat, sometimes joined in to make a quartet:
Pierre?s the tower at left.
A 1927 aerial shows roof work on the Plaza, and Savoy and Sherry Netherland unstarted. It also shows the still residential expanse of the Forties and Fifties between Fifth and Sixth, soon to be swept aside for Rockefeller Center. This was the start of the mother of all building booms; it was after all the Roaring Twenties:
Spot the Sixth Avenue El as it plunges under ground. Mansions lined Fifth Avenue immediately above the Plaza.
By the early Sixties, the Savoy Plaza had grown long in the tooth. It was replaced by the banal bulk of General Motors, Edward Durrell Stone?s white marble paraphrase of Hood?s Daily News grafted to a tepid rendition of Seagram?s massing. The music stopped. No one could harmonize with the new big guy; he was playing the kazoo.
Some members of that old French gang still loiter around la Grande Armee?s Place, but they?re completely cowed by GM; Sherry hovers wraith-like in the shadow, barely visible:
There was another, roughly contemporary but much smaller white marble building by Stone at the Park?s opposite, Southern corner; that?s the one to have kept and this is the one to lose.
Last edited:
Suffolk 83
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Re: Filene's
Nice post, nice examples, and it is sad to see those buildings go... But MSG is beloved by alot of people these days. I think everyone that plays basketball dreams of playing there these days..(the Gahden was betta) I'm not sure if its just because its in the middle of the "big city" or what, but I like the roof from the inside's perspective.
Nice post, nice examples, and it is sad to see those buildings go... But MSG is beloved by alot of people these days. I think everyone that plays basketball dreams of playing there these days..(the Gahden was betta) I'm not sure if its just because its in the middle of the "big city" or what, but I like the roof from the inside's perspective.
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