Bulfinch Crossing | Congress Street Garage | West End

Re: Congress Street Garage Development | West End

It was a lot less awful looking before the office penthouse was added. Less hulking, more sculptural.
 
Re: Congress Street Garage Development | West End

This thing is AWFUL. I would like to meet the people that actually thought building this garage was a good idea?
 
Re: Congress Street Garage Development | West End

To understand you'd have to transport yourself back 45 years in time to when the whole Govt Center Congress St ensemble looked like a shining Brazilia rising from the dung pile.
 
Re: Congress Street Garage Development | West End

tobyjug said:
To understand you'd have to transport yourself back 45 years in time to when the whole Govt Center Congress St ensemble looked like a shining Brazilia rising from the dung pile.
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And as a result Government Center has been every bit as successful as Brasilia in terms of urban environment -- meaning a massive failure.
 
Re: Congress Street Garage Development | West End

TheRifleman said:
This thing is AWFUL. I would like to meet the people that actually thought building this garage was a good idea?
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Perhaps meeting them is a stretch, but you should check out this book about Boston's monumental concrete architecture from the 50's-70's, including this garage.
 
Re: Congress Street Garage Development | West End

JeffDowntown said:
And as a result Government Center has been every bit as successful as Brasilia in terms of urban environment -- meaning a massive failure.
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Easy to say with 45-50 years hindsight. The question was "what were they thinking then". As a "primary source" I can tell you the thoughts were ones of pride and boldness. It is the architecture of the people who sent men to the moon.

Certainly people are no longer proud of the results.

The wheel turns...in 50 years people will say of you "what were they thinking?" I'm just looking out my window and wonder what is truly bold and engenders great pride. Its all very safe and ve'd, isn't it? Perhaps the city will get a "participation certificate" along with Charlotte and Oklahoma City.
 
Re: Congress Street Garage Development | West End

dshoost88 said:
Perhaps meeting them is a stretch, but you should check out this book about Boston's monumental concrete architecture from the 50's-70's, including this garage.
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^Thank you for the tip on that book, I'm ordering it today. I guess I always noticed we have an abundance of concrete structures, but never really thought much about the actual history behind them, or realized just how impactful they are in a historical context.
 
Re: Congress Street Garage Development | West End

tobyjug said:
As a "primary source" I can tell you the thoughts were ones of pride and boldness. It is the architecture of the people who sent men to the moon.
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This.

tobyjug said:
I'm just looking out my window and wonder what is truly bold and engenders great pride. Its all very safe and ve'd, isn't it? Perhaps the city will get a "participation certificate" along with Charlotte and Oklahoma City.
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And, sadly, this.

lapradetom said:
Thank you for the tip on that book, I'm ordering it today.
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It's a brilliant book, thoughtfully concise, insightful, and jammed with beautiful black & white photos.
 
Re: Congress Street Garage Development | West End

Beton Brut said:
This.



And, sadly, this.



It's a brilliant book, thoughtfully concise, insightful, and jammed with beautiful black & white photos.
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^^Beton Brut, why does an interest in architecture history make a person sad?
Don't worry, I am not going to fight to preserve the Brutalist garages! :)
 
Re: Congress Street Garage Development | West End

I won't be sad to see this old thing repurposed in the name of better urbanism and the stylish (though dated) gesture of the Pelli office tower.

To Toby's point, I'm sad over the death of our civic ambition. The buildout of the Bulfinch Triangle is Exhibit A. I'm sad about our occasional excitement over bland forms and cheap materials. The "new" New Boston is a city of background buildings. How did that happen? How do we fix it? Societal priorities, methods, and materials change, but is it unfair to ask where our boldness slinked off to? In what shadow is it lurking? Who's got a pointy stick to wake it up?
 
Re: Congress Street Garage Development | West End

Beton Brut said:
It's a brilliant book, thoughtfully concise, insightful, and jammed with beautiful black & white photos.
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It really is...it is one of the better architecture books in some time, let alone the local subject matter. Whether it was intended or not, it certainly calls our current architectural nothingness into question. Definitely a must-have.
 
Re: Congress Street Garage Development | West End

The overwhelming presence of the old elevated Central Artery made the massive ugliness of the Conress Street garage more to scale at the time, then it is now with the elevated highway and ramps gone.

The old Central Artery distorted the scale, and now that it's gone these old dinosaurs stick out like a sore thumb.
 
Re: Congress Street Garage Development | West End

they're likely coming down in next round.
 
Re: Congress Street Garage Development | West End

I understand the point being made but just like how in the 50s all concrete all the time was the thing, now its glass. In terms of brutalism this was about as stale as it gets. Umass dartmouth is a good example of pushing boundaries for the time period. This tower going up in the same site, by todays standards of participation awards, is the exact opposite. To me the tower going up here is the perfect example of the natural progression of life and the office tower is about as daring as you can get for a height restricted all glass tower. I see it from the exact opposite angle. They are limited in height and just as concrete was then, glass is the in vogue material of today, so glass it is, but no way can you say this tower is not daring. If this was a vanilla participation award tower it would be a 4 equal sided blue glass tower with a flat roof. Its not even close.

Which leads me to tower verre, that brooklyn tower, beekman place, sf has a lot of nice shit going up soon-dont follow sf, dont know the names and I dont mean the supertall, la is about to finally get a non boring tower, burj dubai, kingdom tower, even some shit in china. Theres plenty of stuff out there its just all new so it hasnt aged yet and a lot is in the pipeline. Tower verre in 100 years, currently not even built yet, may go down as the greatest skyscraper of all time. It will never dominate like the empire state but purely 1v1 100 years from now when we have self driving cars and virtual reality, people are going to look back at that tower and be like damn, they were on point in the "old days". That tower is no fucking joke. Like top 3-5 greatest of all time already guarinteed before its even built levels of architecture occuring there right now.

New york honestly if you sift through some of the shitty stuff is actually building, planning, some next step in the architectural direction towers right now that is going to bleed off into other cities once it becomes the norm imo. For a while we were in the glass phase, and its really just hitting Boston now even though some of them (sst+copley) were planned a long time ago. Ny is moving pat the glass phase into what I feel is a natural maturation of this into Id almost call it structural art deco. Still throwing up glass towers but the top architects are having a free for all in the playground that is NYC to move past the simple glass of yesteryear and really get it to again be world class.
 
Re: Congress Street Garage Development | West End

stick n move said:
I understand the point being made but just like how in the 50s all concrete all the time was the thing, now its glass. In terms of brutalism this was about as stale as it gets. Umass dartmouth is a good example of pushing boundaries for the time period. .
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Stick -- Butalism was all about dehumanizing architecture -- UMass Dartmouth -- sorry to say this given the Tsarnaev connection -0- But

Comes the revolution -- BOOOM!!
 
Re: Congress Street Garage Development | West End

http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2016/05/26/buildgarage/fM4VaW1Bx1nWfxwOywDXeN/story.html

Other than the insistent talk about preserving parking, the interesting thing was the fast-and-loose with the dates. The portion of the garage over Congress will begin coming down concurrent with the office tower (and will take a year), but HYM has no commitment on when the office tower will start.

I'm still skeptical how many anchor tenants there really are to make all these towers move. SST's shift to residential takes that one out of purgatory, but we've still got this one, Hub on Causeway, and BBY waiting, and I can't remember the last time a Class A tenant was actually found for a project (121 Seaport is building without one and GE's building its own thing, so it might be either Goodwin Procter or pwc).
 
Re: Congress Street Garage Development | West End

Maybe the bank of america thing is finally on and somehow theyve kept 100% radio silence. Very unlikely, but possible.
 
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