Charles St. Jail Hotel

The original cupola featured a clock:

CSJail.jpg
 
That cupola looks utterly fake and completely out of proportion to the rest of the building. And I hope that's not the final color....
 
I'm sorry, but in my opinion, that cupola looks awful. I really hope that they end up doing something to the cupola or the building to make it fit in more.
 
Former Charles St. jail reborn as Liberty Hotel
Developer hires two managers for the luxury site
By Thomas C. Palmer Jr., Globe Staff | September 30, 2006
When it opens as a luxury hotel next June, the former Charles Street Jail on Cambridge Street in Boston will have a name reflecting what its former occupants longed for: Liberty.

Developer Richard L. Friedman said yesterday he has hired a general manager and sales manager for the hotel and -- following a long and spirited discussion -- decided to call the it The Liberty Hotel.
``It's a Boston kind of name," Friedman, who owns the Charles Hotel in Harvard Square, among other properties. ``The opposite of confinement."
Built in 1851, the old granite jailhouse was an imposing structure that seemed right out of a Dickens novel. It is located on Charles Circle, where the city of Boston is renovating Cambridge Street and the MBTA is improving the Charles/MGH Red Line station.
Because it is a historic structure, the jail must be preserved, and is now being renovated. Meanwhile, a 16-story wing Friedman added has been topped off with steel, and a 22,000-pound cupola was swung into place this month over the jail.
``The cupola was cut out of the original building -- they didn't have enough money," Friedman said. He found early plans for it, though, had one fashioned out of glass and aluminum, and placed it over the dome at the center of the old structure, which is in the shape of a cruciform, or cross.
Friedman said the historic preservation and restoration, overseen by Ann Beha Architects of Boston, has been extensive.
Views outward will be of the Charles River and the Esplanade. ``There will be some bars on windows on the lower floor," said Friedman, and some actual cells will remain.
``You'll know this was a jail," he said.
Project costs have risen about 20 percent, to about $120 million, he said. The project is receiving about $14 million in state and federal tax credits because so much of the building, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is being preserved.
The 300-room Liberty Hotel will be operated by MTM Management LLC of Seattle, founded by Jim Treadway, who Friedman said grew up on Beacon Hill not far from the jail.
Friedman's firm, Carpenter & Co., is developing the hotel with Kennedy Associates Real Estate Counsel LP of Seattle, a pension-fund adviser. The architect is Cambridge Seven Associates Inc., and the interiors are being designed by Alexandra Champalimaud & Associates Inc. of New York.
Friedman said Stuart Meyerson, who formerly ran Hyatt Regency hotels in Cambridge and Newport, R.I., has been hired as general manager. Sean Reardon, formerly director of sales and marketing at the Westin Copley Place hotel, will do marketing.
 
On March 23, 1933, the newly elected members of the Reichstag met in the Kroll Opera House in Berlin to consider passing Hitler's "Erm?chtigungsgesetz". The "Enabling Act" was officially called the 'Law for Removing the Distress of the People and the Reich.'

Opponents to the bill argued that if it was passed, it would end democracy in Germany and establish a legal dictatorship of Adolf Hitler. To soften resistance to the passing of the Enabling Act, the Nazis secretly caused confusion in order to create an atmosphere in which the law seem necessary to restore order.

On February 27, 1933, Nazis burned the Reichstag building, and a seat of the German government, causing frenzy and outrage. They successfully blamed the fire on the Communists, and claimed it marked the beginning of a widespread terrorism and unrest threatening the safety of the German "Homeland." On the day of the vote, Nazi storm troopers gathered around the opera house chanting, "Full powers - or else! We want the bill - or fire and murder!"

More: http://www.furnitureforthepeople.com/actpat.htm
 
I don't get it, I thought they were aiming for historical accuracy. Why couldn't they recreate the original cupola rather than the out-of-proportion disneyfied version that they have now? That color is also quite awful. What were they thinking?
 
It looks like they got the new cupola on sale at Home Depot. :twisted:

I agree, it is completely out of proportion and plastic looking.
 
I've been following this board for about a year, essentially since I got into the local development scene. Anyway, this is just the first thought I have when I read this board which seems to be full of wannabe architects and armchair developers: rather than the idiotic bitching about every single project, take some initiative, and go out and make your own mark. My firm has something in the works right now that would blow away any realistic project out there, and shockingly it isn't 12,000 feet, that seems to be the going rate for satisfaction here, but the market isn't right at the moment, just like it isn't quite right for two one thousand footers plus sst, gateway center and the seaport. It's a pipedream and nothing more, go to houston if you like high buildings and higher vacancy rates.
 
naushoncap122 said:
I've been following this board for about a year, essentially since I got into the local development scene. Anyway, this is just the first thought I have when I read this board which seems to be full of wannabe architects and armchair developers: rather than the idiotic bitching about every single project, take some initiative, and go out and make your own mark. My firm has something in the works right now that would blow away any realistic project out there, and shockingly it isn't 12,000 feet, that seems to be the going rate for satisfaction here, but the market isn't right at the moment, just like it isn't quite right for two one thousand footers plus sst, gateway center and the seaport. It's a pipedream and nothing more, go to houston if you like high buildings and higher vacancy rates.
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There's nothing forcing you to read the forum, write to it, change it or insult the intelligence of its members.
 
"My firm has something in the works right now that would blow away any realistic project out there....but the market isn't right at the moment".

ORLY?

If a project isn't realistic then it must be unrealistic and thus, a pipe dream.
 
yes, naushoncap122, the fact that you would write a considerably long post just to order people around is incredibly rude and unthoughtful. I'm sure others here would agree with me when i say that this forum is for people who want to be productive and/or gather information, not for people who just post to put people down.
 
There's some contradiction in there.

He's generally right about the incessant bitching though.
 
naushoncap122 said:
I've been following this board for about a year, essentially since I got into the local development scene. Anyway, this is just the first thought I have when I read this board which seems to be full of wannabe architects and armchair developers: rather than the idiotic bitching about every single project, take some initiative, and go out and make your own mark.
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Some of us are involved in developing, and others doubtless will be in the future. Being in the former group, I think the urban design comments on this forum are mostly better informed and more sophisticated than those of my colleagues. If I wanted to have pointless conversations with ignoramuses who have been victimized by their educations, I would talk to them about cities. But I'm here --like you-- because the talk is good. Good enough to have you "following the board for about a year."

So why don't you try being a bit more civil and contribute something a little positive? Tell us more about your firm's bombshell project; you don't have to compromise its identity to do that. And I'm sure we'll all overlook your initial hissy fit in next to no time.

Welcome!
 
I apologize for it sounding very hissy fittish, I didn't realize how bad it was until well after I posted it.

In regards to the bombshell project, I perhaps may have gone overboard with better than anything, it isn't a potential renzo piano tower, but it certainly will clean up newbury a bit more. Essentially this is still really vague, but the goal is a foster or calatrava designed 10 floor, maybe more, mixed use condo or boutique hotel/retail building. Unfortunately, in order to be successful as both condo and hotel, and looking at the relatively small plot of land, I would have to go upwards of 20 which even with starting prices of 1.5 per condo or 500 a night in the hotel, would never fly. I think with the intended clientele it could be pushed through the BBAC with less problems than if it were just a marriott or something. If that doesn't fly, our big plan 5 years down the road is a 35-40 floor mirror glass condo/apartment/hotel tower in the theater district. As a VC firm our main focus is biotech but with my family's history in architecture, I have always had a soft spot for development.
 
naushoncap122 said:
In regards to the bombshell project?it certainly will clean up newbury a bit more.
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Hope it?s for that *@#$%&#* parking lot at Dartmouth.

naushoncap122 said:
Essentially this is still really vague, but the goal is a foster or calatrava designed 10 floor, maybe more, mixed use condo or boutique hotel/retail building. Unfortunately, in order to be successful as both condo and hotel, and looking at the relatively small plot of land, I would have to go upwards of 20 which even with starting prices of 1.5 per condo or 500 a night in the hotel, would never fly.
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The numbers wouldn?t fly or the configuration wouldn?t fly with the NIMBYs and the regulators?

naushoncap122 said:
I think with the intended clientele it could be pushed through the BBAC with less problems than if it were just a marriott or something.
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For sure; everybody loves rich folks. There are getting to be more and more of them all the time, and they?re getting so rich they want a dozen pieds-a-terre ? one in each of their favorite hot spots. Trouble is, they can only live in one of them at a time, so most of them are usually empty. Have you checked out Trump?s time-share hotel proposal for these folks on the fringes of SoHo?

I?m at work on a project for these obscenely rich people in Charleston. You can imagine the lively interest the historical folks are showing in that one. The trick to getting them on your side is to come in way exceeding their wildest dreams and hopes ?something you can do when you don?t have to worry much about construction cost, as is the case with this market.

These people will pay through the nose for something that really tickles their fancy and delivers the goods. Remember these are the folks waiting in line for Bugattis at a million euros. That one delivers the goods, and they?re goods that nobody really needs: 250 mph, 1001 HP, 16 cylinders.

In an interview, the chairman of Volkswagen (Bugattii's maker) divulged they make a substantial profit on each car; they decided the car would sell more briskly at a million euros than at cost plus the usual markup. (Why, it's the million Euro Bugatti!) Pulls people's chain. And it also helps that they have the finest materials, technology and design.

naushoncap122 said:
If that doesn't fly?
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It?ll fly. Just do it.
 
naushoncap122, I got to read your reply before you deleted it. Your secret's safe with me. IMO your project is eminently do-able. It's all in the approach. Does 32 stories and 495 feet sound about right? *Hint* That should get you going on a train of thought. Also: think Singer Building.
 
In my opinion this guy doesn't sound credible. His writing just plain sucks.
 
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