Holocaust Museum Boston | 125 Tremont Street | Downtown

From today. Cranes up.
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I'm Jewish & all for Holocaust commemoration & education of course, but was this really the right location for this? We want all the tourists & visitors at perhaps the main intersection of the city really cowering under a deportation railcar? Well, guess thats what we are getting now...
 
JS38 said:
I'm Jewish & all for Holocaust commemoration & education of course, but was this really the right location for this? We want all the tourists & visitors at perhaps the main intersection of the city really cowering under a deportation railcar? Well, guess thats what we are getting now...
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Me too. I’ve been posting all along, but more from the vantage point that the big white cube architecture of this museum is completely out of character with that corner. It would fit very well elsewhere, but that location is out of context.
 
Was the building this replaces historically or architecturally meaningful? No. Probably not. A little shabby. Yes. Some call that patina. Some don't. (We have a lot of that in Boston. I'm grateful.)

Whatever the previous building was it made sense for that block, was a good and fitting neighbor. A silent, if unassuming, sentinel. This new thing? A good neighbor? Respectfully. No. This is an intrusion. On an important street. Couldn't this have been built elsewhere?

Little nibbles of this sort eventually change our city. Not for the better. This sounds like hyperbole, I know, but it's not. A building here, a building there, old, yes, but not meritorious enough to preserve. Then we build a fairly obtuse statement like this, or too often even worse, and we call it progress. It's not.

Personally, I prefer patina to new, especially when it alters a street. But that's me.

Moving to a generic middle diminishes Boston.
 
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Jeremi said:
Folks, get a grip. This is a new civic institution and cultural facility that is replacing a flat and awkward faux-colonial mid century building that housed a FedEx location and a 7/11.
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The new museum will be a vast upgrade for that somewhat tired stretch of Tremont. No one mistook the older building for HH Richardson.
 
Nobody is mourning the old building.

It;s the ARCITECTURE of the IKEA-white cube being plunked down, instead of something more contextual for the corner across from Boston Common and the Granary Burying Ground that is the issue. It’s just a bad neighbor, architecturally. Context.

And the previous point about old buildings having a FedEx and 7/11 has nothing to do with the EXTERNAL architecture shell. If THAT was relevant, then does the below become expendable?????

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shmessy said:
Nobody is mourning the old building.

It;s the ARCITECTURE of the IKEA-white cube being plunked down, instead of something more contextual for the corner across from Boston Common and the Granary Burying Ground that is the issue. It’s just a bad neighbor, architecturally. Context.
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This is the NIMBYest thing I think anyone has said on this forum.
 
Jeremi said:
This is the NIMBYest thing I think anyone has said on this forum.
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Hard disagree. Caring about what something looks like does not at all make someone a NIMBY. (This is an architecture forum after all.)

YIMBYs should absolutely care about good architecture and context for a bunch of reasons, but one of them is that when the public objects to the way a proposed building looks and makes them feel, it makes it much easier to oppose ALL developments across the board.

E.g., the scourge of shitty five-over-one apartments in the last fifteen years have really validated NIMBY complaints, and undercut the cause of YIMBYs. We'd all be in a better place if that building form were better.
 
JumboBuc said:
Hard disagree. Caring about what something looks like does not at all make someone a NIMBY. (This is an architecture forum after all.)

YIMBYs should absolutely care about good architecture and context for a bunch of reasons, but one of them is that when the public objects to the way a proposed building looks and makes them feel, it makes it much easier to oppose ALL developments across the board.

E.g., the scourge of shitty five-over-one apartments in the last fifteen years have really validated NIMBY complaints, and undercut the cause of YIMBYs. We'd all be in a better place if that building form were better.
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This isn’t a five over one.
 
This feels like a rehash of the conversation that happened a few pages ago. The SPRA linked in the first post includes a description from the proponent of the genesis of the project and the deliberate choice of location and design. To place it elsewhere or to make its design more contextual would be to ignore the purpose of the project.
 
JS38 said:
I'm Jewish & all for Holocaust commemoration & education of course, but was this really the right location for this? We want all the tourists & visitors at perhaps the main intersection of the city really cowering under a deportation railcar? Well, guess thats what we are getting now...
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1.) If not a regional Holocaust museum at 125 Tremont St., then what superior location within Boston city limits do you propose? Why would that location be better, objectively?

2.) When you write "all the tourists and visitors," you seem to be acknowledging that this location, being on the Freedom Trail, on a major Downtown crossroad, already enjoys very high sightseer traffic--is that somehow problematic relative to the siting of the museum [which by definition is seeking to attract tourists and visitors, no matter how grim and awful the subject matter/content]?

3.) When you write, "cowering," what do you mean precisely?
 
RandomWalk said:
This feels like a rehash of the conversation that happened a few pages ago. The SPRA linked in the first post includes a description from the proponent of the genesis of the project and the deliberate choice of location and design. To place it elsewhere or to make its design more contextual would be to ignore the purpose of the project.
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Yes, the project description and introduction lay out specific reasons and design decisions that led to this building's location and design.

A Holocaust Museum intended to act as a representation of hope being asked to look more like Boston is a strange ask and, speaking for myself, would lead to more "why did they do that" questions over the current design. I find it much more fair to ask that of most other program types - residential, commercial, labs, libraries, schools, parks, even art museums. A Holocaust Museum? Very specific program, objectives, and design moves. Also, while I don't think the typical passerby will notice, a nice silent nod to the site's history is included by reusing the original granite foundation of the 1880's building that was retained in the 1955 building.
 
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