North End Piazza on The Greenway | 198 Hanover Street | North End

StillInTheHood said:
In other cities (e.g., New York) the particulars of architectural proposals are discussed and iterated and picked over by design professionals almost to a fault, but we're never going to get that under this team.
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Here’s looking at you, Charleston…
 
Shop names up.

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What, you're saying that you liked it better before?!
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It had problems, so you can't complain about the new version. Plus, technically, it IS a piazza (kind of):
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(Joking, it's terrible and arguably worse than nothing. Just injecting some Copley Square or City Hall Plaza renovation rhetoric.)
 
Sadly it is appropriate for our current Millennial gray era. What's most shocking is that this went before multiple design committees.
 
www.nbcboston.com

New ‘gateway' to North End divides public: ‘Beautiful' or ‘assault to the eyes?'

The historic Boston neighborhood has a specific character, but does the redevelopment between Hanover Street and Salem Street fit it? We asked around.
www.nbcboston.com www.nbcboston.com

Boston City Councilor-at-Large Erin Murphy said projects of this scale involve can be risky investments.

"In many ways, they're taking a risk," Murphy said, adding that they are "making the neighborhood better."

Murphy also expressed confidence in DePasquale.

"I think we should just trust him and trust that he's going to do right by the neighborhood, cause he always does," she said.
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Is this the same Erin Murphy who opposed Plan: Downtown because tall buildings don't fit with the 'historic neighborhood' and regularly opposes new housing for similar reasons but supports this mess? Odd
 
I'm not sure of Boston's specific language, but typically any time you are working with Historic districts (typically I have seen it in renovations though) new construction should be "definitively different". That is certainly vague language as the goal is not to force a certain design on to projects, but rather set up one parameter that needs to be met.

An example I'll use is a hotel project in downtown Nashville that abuts the Honky Tonks of Lower Broadway. The building within the historic district was an old record storage building. The design committees said the new addition needed to have a different identity than the original, so the finished product was a facade that is meant to emulate the audio levels on a mixing board. Not perfect, does a reasonable job when working with the parameters.
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This project is ugly! The material choice (lick and stick stone base + panel and bad metal(?) above). The rhythm of the facade. The overall massing. Everything feels wrong. I agree that while going through multiple committees is a hurdle, there were so many decisions along the way that the developer could have done differently to improve this project. The city should shoulder some of the blame for the level of bureaucracy it has created for development projects, but I still put majority of blame on the developer for this monstrosity.
 
Honestly, I was waiting for the signage to opine on its appearance - colorful awnings etc could have saved it - but tiny white text with silver outlines on grey? It's barely even legible from across the street.
 
Plastering 4 puny signs on every available surface (in both double and single line format...) for this one business is comically ugly. Why would they not design 1 cool, properly sized on at the corner?

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