City Hall Discussion - Redevelopment - Preservation - Relocation

castevens said:
I thought it was just how they got people like Matsuzaka in without having to wait in traffic
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You're exactly right!

VIP Lane.

Instead of minimum occupant requirement, it has a minimum salary requirement. :shock:
 
Opposition Growing to City Hall Sale


BOSTON - Preservationists and architects are scrambling to save City Hall from the wrecking ball, citing the brick and concrete building?s significance as an example of classic modernism. Earlier in the week during an annual address, Mayor Thomas Menino revealed plans to sell the current City Hall property and construct a new facility in the South part of Boston.

Susan Park, head of the Boston Preservation Alliance, tells GlobeSt.com that members of the non-profit organization will meet next Wednesday to discuss the Mayor?s plans.

?In today?s world, is City Hall the most efficient building going? Probably not, but that doesn?t mean it doesn?t have architectural significance,? says Park, adding that she expects the alliance to issue a statement on its position following next week?s meeting.

Architect David Fixler, a principal with Einhorn Yaffe Prescott and president of the New England Chapter of Docomomo, an organization that promotes the documentation and conservation of buildings considered to be part of the modern movement, tells GlobeSt.com that members are concerned the structure, once hailed as one of the most significant buildings in the country, will be destroyed.

?This is a building that has always had its troubles but it has a place in history,? says Fixler, noting that the building and the surrounding plaza has hosted everything from anti-war and desegregation demonstrations to summertime concerts during its 40-year history.

Fixler, who has worked on the building, says the structure has always been treated as a historic building by preservation groups, the Boston Landmarks Commission and the National Trust.

?It has become Boston?s great public gathering space. In that sense, it has become the locus of civic life,? Fixler says.

But the building also has architectural significance, he notes. An award-winning building that has long been considered an architectural marvel by architects, City Hall was named one of the 10 most significant buildings in the United States in the mid-1970s by members of the American Institute of Architects, Fixler says. Today, it remains an example of classic modernist style.

Fixler says he expects Docomomo will take a position on the building?s sale in hopes of preserving the structure that he says remains symbolic of Boston?s rebirth as a world class city.



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DudeUrSistersHot said:
Ron Newman said:
Is there a special lane? I though it was just a special on-ramp.
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According to the Globe, it's a dedicated lane.
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Can you post that? This issue came up before and I remember we were all convinced that there is no dedicated lane that extends the length of the Ted Williams Tunnel. Here I see just two tubes:

tedwilliams1_tunnel.jpg
 
DudeUrSistersHot said:
According to the Globe, it's a dedicated lane.
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If such a thing existed it would surely be in use already as a reversible HOV/Silver Line lane. I don't think it exists.
 
Debating the over-Hall: Boston architects, planners all have ideas on whether and how to do it
By Paul Restuccia
Sunday, December 17, 2006


Does Boston really need a new city hall and what should we do with the one we have now?

Those are questions some of the Hub?s leading architects and planners are debating in the wake of Mayor Thomas M. Menino?s call last week to sell the 9-acre City Hall site and construct a new building on a 14-acre site along the South Boston waterfront.

The 1969-built City Hall, an international award-winning building, is generally liked by architects but has long been despised by the much of the public and the mayor, who wants a new icon to reflect 21st century Boston.

?I think building a new City Hall is a good idea as long as a new building is better than the current one,? says Tim Love, principal of Utile Inc., a firm that?s done master planning work on Southie?s Fort Point District, the edges along the new Greenway and Summer Street from downtown to the new convention center.

?But whether we do build it should also depend on what is done with the City Hall site which would have to be brilliantly redesigned to make the move worthwhile,? adds Love, who has also designed several high-style condo complexes in Southie. ?I like the current building but there are better uses for its nine acres.?

Love suggests a public-private partnership that would ensure that what goes on the current site will be a mix of uses as well as open space of the highest quality rather than a development solely determined by the bottom line. And if what would replace City Hall was better, he says he would support demolishing it.

Frano Violich, who is head of the Boston Society of Architects? design committee, supports building a new city hall, but not destroying the old one.

?We have to use our imagination on how to reuse the current City Hall,? says Violich, of influential cutting-edge firm Kennedy & Violich. He suggests turning the building into a performance center or even housing and adding higher-density development around it. ?I like the building, but the city?s got to evolve. It?s time to move on.?

But other architects are against adaptive reuse of the current City Hall as well as the loss of its expansive brick plaza.

?Do we really need another iconic location for a city hall when we already have one?? argues Anne Beha, who has won awards for her contemporary addition to the Christian Science Monitor library and whose preservation work includes the former Charles Street Jail, which is being converted into a hotel. ?We tore down Scollay Square for this location which is at the crossroads of the city and accessible to all by multiple subway lines.?

Jane Weinzapfel of Leers and Weinzapfel Architects, who successfully adapted and added to another major 1960s iconic building, the Harvard Science Center, thinks that the same thing can be done for City Hall.

?You could add a glass addition on top with more space and redesign and brighten the interior to meet the needs of city government for the future,? she says. ?Why rip City Hall out of the heart of the city and move it to the extremities? The South Boston Waterfront doesn?t need a city hall to be successful.?

But economic arguments for relocating are strong - nine acres of prime development that could fetch $300 million or more and provide millions more in annual tax revenue.

?The reason why we have the present City Hall building and plaza is because in the early 1960s Boston was desperate for renewal but that is no longer the case,? says David Dixon, a principal at the Hub?s Goody Clancy & Associates whose urban planning has won numerous national awards. ?We now have a chance to add more vigor to this part of downtown that needs more people and more activity.?

If that means demolishing the current City Hall, Dixon says he would support that.

?I love the building but that doesn?t mean it has to always be there,? Dixon says. ?We are a more confident city now and should build a new city hall whose image reflects us as a city of profound creativity and innovation, a building that?s exuberant and celebratory with important public meeting places that will bring people there.?

What might that new image be? Seattle has chosen to have a showpiece of green technology as its new city hall. Austin?s is a stony mass with jutting angles. San Jose?s new 18-story municipal center with its attached glass rotunda is all about transparency of a government accessible to all. And London relocated its new city hall out of its center along the Thames into a dramatic glass egg with stunning interior balconies.

Violich suggests a chameleon-like building in Southie - one where changing images can be projected on the exterior and one that uses materials that harness energy from the sun and reflect light from the water.

But cutting-edge architect Monica Ponce de Leon of Office dA doesn?t think that city hall needs a new image. She adds that it?s less environmentally friendly to demolish an existing building, one she says was ?built to last.?

?We shouldn?t tear down a building important to the history of architecture just because it?s fallen out of fashion - that?s short-sighted,? says Ponce de Leon, whose award-winning work includes the soon-to-open Macallen Building in South Boston, a high-design and environment-friendly condo complex, which will have a sloping grass-covered roof. ?City Hall has personal memories for me - I got married there - and has a lot of public memories as well as a place of city celebrations when the Patriots [team stats] and Red Sox [team stats] won.?

But Maryann Thompson, who designed the award-winning pavilion and vine trellises project at Arnold Arboretum, thinks the current plaza should be turned into a park with ?lots of big trees? and that the current building should be refitted to be brighter and more energy-efficient.

Harvard Design School planning head Rodolfo Machado, of Boston firm Machado and Silvetti Associates, who designed a park near the proposed Southie site, feels that the current city hall is a great building that should be left as is.

?City Halls don?t move easily,? says Machado, who also designed the posh Atelier/505 condo and theater complex in the South End. ?I think it?s a good idea to put a major civic building on the waterfront, perhaps a City Hall annex.?

But Menino wants a new city hall in Southie, not an outpost.

?Whether we do this or not, it should not be the decision of one man,? Beha says. ?All the citizens of the city need to be involved.?



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Machado said:
?Whether we do this or not, it should not be the decision of one man,? Beha says. ?All the citizens of the city need to be involved.?
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Yeah, but this is a public building. It's the most public of all public buildings. You can't build that without democratic input.
 
i think that an overwhelming majority of the citizens would agree with this plan. The only ones that wouldn't are archisexuals and women who become emotionally attached to stupidity.
 
lol ^.

But yes, maybe they should cast a vote or something.
 
the Boston Globe said:
Before tearing it down, Mr. Mayor, how 'bout fixing some things up?


By Michael Jonas | December 17, 2006

It may lack the charge of history that was packed into a famous political pronouncement outside Berlin's Brandenburg Gate, but the call from a soapbox in the middle of City Hall Plaza to "Tear down this hall!" has been longed for by many.

The prospects for Boston finally doing away with its much-reviled seat of city government seemed to improve dramatically last week when the person doing the imploring was the same one with the power to do the imploding.

In announcing that he wants to sell off City Hall and its windswept plaza to developers and use the proceeds to build a dramatic new structure along the South Boston waterfront, Mayor Tom Menino made it clear he sees metaphorical messaging in the grand plan. The mayor proclaimed his intention to build an "architecturally magnificent" City Hall that captures "the promise of tomorrow's Boston."

But unlike Ronald Reagan's 1987 speech, which targeted the wall dividing Berlin as part of a bold challenge to a calcified communist system, it's hard to see any larger challenge to the old order in Menino's edifice dream. Indeed, the risk could be that the plan becomes a bread-and-circuses distraction from issues demanding true bold action and vision, from policing to schooling.

If there's a bricks-and-mortar metaphor for how Boston is doing on those fronts, it may be the deplorable state of the current center of city government, where makeshift "temporary" fencing put up following the Sept. 11 attacks along the Cambridge Street edge of City Hall Plaza remains in place five years later. There may be a good case to be made for a new waterfront City Hall. There is certainly one to be made for dealing far better with the one we now have -- and will have for some years to come, regardless of what happens with Menino's proposal.

But cautionary tales abound on the limits of new structures to remedy problems of human leadership and will.

In 1997, the city's Police Department moved, to great fanfare, into a shiny new $70 million headquarters, equipped with the latest in law enforcement communications and technology.

Nine years later, the city is reeling from gang gunfire that has sent the murder and shooting rate soaring. None of the policing bells and whistles can address the departmental infighting and inertia that have helped give Boston among the lowest homicide clearance rates of any big city department in the country.

Bold would be Menino declaring that he will not stand for this state of affairs, which has practically given gangbangers a license to shoot without worry.

It would send a true message of hope to neighborhoods besieged by gun violence if he announced that he's told his new police commissioner, Ed Davis, that he expects a major turnaround in clearance rates -- and that he will back Davis in whatever it takes to make that happen, including shakeups in the command staff.

In education, too, gleaming new buildings are popular, but don't appear to be the essential ingredient for success.

The three newest Boston school buildings all rank near the bottom in MCAS scores. The $30 million Orchard Gardens School, opened in 2003, placed next to last out of 575 schools statewide on the most recent English MCAS exam.

Pushing for more leeway to reassign teachers in underperforming schools during current contract talks, or raising the issue of longer school days, might be more fruitful paths to school improvement.

It's a lot easier to build new buildings than to rebuild the institutions within them, a task that often means stepping on toes and taking on entrenched interests committed to the status quo. But it is the latter type of building, not the former, that holds the "promise of tomorrow's Boston."

Michael Jonas can be reached at jonas@globe.com.
? Copyright 2006 Globe Newspaper Company.
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Ron Newman said:
Yeah, but this is a public building. It's the most public of all public buildings. You can't build that without democratic input.
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You can and you should. Medical practice affects the lives of ordinary people far more directly and importantly than city government. Does that call for a system where one becomes a doctor by standing for an election? Should cancer treatments be determined by referendum? Of course not: Joe Sixpack can't make useful medical judgements. Leave it to the experts, regulated at arm's length by the government.

Should biological theories be judged by popular will? Well, it's been tried recently... In fact, the whole CIty Hall debate reminds me of the Kansas school board debacle, transposed into architcture.

Is architecture any different? Here is why it may appear so: when asked about angiogenesis inhibitors as a potential cancer treatment, the average Joe draws a blank, but he has no trouble reacting to a building. The problem is that he then proceeds to take his gut reaction as the ultimate authoritative opinion, in no need of articulation or justification. You need not go any farther than this thread to see examples of that. Read Sister's posts next to ablarc's, and then ask yourself: if you were unusure about what you thought about City Hall, whose opinion would be more likely to sway you?

So here I propose a fairly low bar for who should have a say: those who have seen a large enough sample of architecture to inform their opinions, and who can articulate those opinions beyond grunting 'cool' or 'sucks'. Notice that my criteria in no way prefer any particular taste: ablarc passes them par excellence, even though I disagree with him 40% of the time.

Ron is an interesting case: articulate all right, he seems far too ready to dismiss aesthetics over utility (City Hall, Charles/MGH and the South Station waiting room discussions stuck in my memory as examples of this). Utility is a perfectly intelligible criterion, moreover one to which architecture should pay a fair bit of heed. But there are many fewer museums dedicated to flush toilets than to painting, even though the former are infinitely more useful. And is it not willful to construe usefulness so narrowly as to exclude aesthetics? Does a public building not play a useful role by exposing the citizenry to architecture that rises above the ordinary or is even challenging? Does this not outweigh the mild annoyance that 10% of the people paying their parking tickets experience when they take a wrong turn in one of City Hall's labyrinthine corridors? (City Hall has its flaws; I'm as aware of that as J.S. But fix it, don't nix it.)

In fact, I submit that calling for a vote on what constitutes good architecture is a misunderstanding not only of art, but of democracy. One doesn't give everybody the vote because everybody can meaningfully contribute to a debate on interest rates or the Near East. Rather, the people (and far be it from me to use the Greek term) function much like water does in a nuclear reactor: an inert mass that keeps the energy source (the elite) from spinning out of control.

The leaders of the Slaveowners' Rebellion of 1776 got it right: aristocratic republic is the ideal form of government. How much more so in matters of taste...

justin
 
justin said:
Ron Newman said:
Yeah, but this is a public building. It's the most public of all public buildings. You can't build that without democratic input.
Click to expand...

You can and you should. Medical practice affects the lives of ordinary people far more directly and importantly than city government. Does that call for a system where one becomes a doctor by standing for an election? Should cancer treatments be determined by referendum? Of course not: Joe Sixpack can't make useful medical judgements. Leave it to the experts, regulated at arm's length by the government.

Should biological theories be judged by popular will? Well, it's been tried recently... In fact, the whole CIty Hall debate reminds me of the Kansas school board debacle, transposed into architcture.

Is architecture any different? Here is why it may appear so: when asked about angiogenesis inhibitors as a potential cancer treatment, the average Joe draws a blank, but he has no trouble reacting to a building. The problem is that he then proceeds to take his gut reaction as the ultimate authoritative opinion, in no need of articulation or justification. You need not go any farther than this thread to see examples of that. Read Sister's posts next to ablarc's, and then ask yourself: if you were unusure about what you thought about City Hall, whose opinion would be more likely to sway you?

So here I propose a fairly low bar for who should have a say: those who have seen a large enough sample of architecture to inform their opinions, and who can articulate those opinions beyond grunting 'cool' or 'sucks'. Notice that my criteria in no way prefer any particular taste: ablarc passes them par excellence, even though I disagree with him 40% of the time.

Ron is an interesting case: articulate all right, he seems far too ready to dismiss aesthetics over utility (City Hall, Charles/MGH and the South Station waiting room discussions stuck in my memory as examples of this). Utility is a perfectly intelligible criterion, moreover one to which architecture should pay a fair bit of heed. But there are many fewer museums dedicated to flush toilets than to painting, even though the former are infinitely more useful. And is it not willful to construe usefulness so narrowly as to exclude aesthetics? Does a public building not play a useful role by exposing the citizenry to architecture that rises above the ordinary or is even challenging? Does this not outweigh the mild annoyance that 10% of the people paying their parking tickets experience when they take a wrong turn in one of City Hall's labyrinthine corridors? (City Hall has its flaws; I'm as aware of that as J.S. But fix it, don't nix it.)

In fact, I submit that calling for a vote on what constitutes good architecture is a misunderstanding not only of art, but of democracy. One doesn't give everybody the vote because everybody can meaningfully contribute to a debate on interest rates or the Near East. Rather, the people (and far be it from me to use the Greek term) function much like water does in a nuclear reactor: an inert mass that keeps the energy source (the elite) from spinning out of control.

The leaders of the Slaveowners' Rebellion of 1776 got it right: aristocratic republic is the ideal form of government. How much more so in matters of taste...

justin
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How'd all that work out for the people of the West End?

In the case of City Hall, arriving at some kind of democratic consensus isn't about defining good or bad architecture; It's about deciding if a baron 9 acre site, in the middle of one of the greatest cities in the country is the most beneficial and efficient use of space.
 
?City Hall has personal memories for me - I got married there - and has a lot of public memories as well as a place of city celebrations when the Patriots and Red Sox won.?
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Actually Ponce, there was only one Superbowl celebration at City Hall Plaza. The other two Superbowl celebrations as well as the World Series celebration took place in the form of "rolling rallies," so don't perpetuate the myth that CHP is some sort of significant, monumental meeting place.

But Maryann Thompson, who designed the award-winning pavilion and vine trellises project at Arnold Arboretum, thinks the current plaza should be turned into a park with ?lots of big trees? and that the current building should be refitted to be brighter and more energy-efficient.
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Hmm. The Arnold Arboretum and City Hall Plaza...Now that I think about it, those are two places that should share many similarities. :roll:
There is also this place just a stone's throw away from City hall that has "lots of big trees." Its called the Boston Common.
 
ablarc said:
justin, I found your post so interesting that I posted it at Wired New York (hope it's OK), where there's an interesting discussion on this subject: http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?p=136396&posted=1#post136396
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ablarc, since you keep referring us to the NY forum and like to hold Boston to the same standards as you do NY, tell me, would your prescription for City Hall Plaza be the same if it existed in Midtown Manhattan? Just curious.
 
Justin, if you were arguing against democratic input into the engineering of buildings I would agree completely. This aspect of architecture ? ensuring a building does not collapse ? is in a sense even more crucial than a cancer treatment or any other medical procedure because virtually every person on Earth occupies buildings. Therefore, unsoundly engineered construction has the potential to kill virtually everyone on Earth. Anyone who would advocate that Joe Sixpack be allowed to affect the engineering of a building would be summarily laughed at.


But you?re comparing the artistic aspects of architecture to life-or-death medicine. I just don?t think the argument carries water.


All art, including the art infused in architecture, is trivial ? as much as it pains me to admit. There are no lives at stake here and if every piece of art on the planet were to vanish tomorrow we?d still get by. We may be a bit bored, but we?d still get by. Art is not a necessity.


Art is also a very subjective thing, unlike, say, physics or human biology. You cant really get it wrong, IMO, because art really requires the perceiver to complete its circuit, so to speak. It is that act of a person perceiving that thing, and responding to it that finally makes it art. Joe Sixpack's interpretation is as valid as Professor Whoever's. I think it is arrogant to dismiss the point-of-views of those unschooled in the esoterica of art/architectural theory. I dont believe that some special education is essential in forming a critical judgment about a piece of architecture or art. In fact, when it comes to City Hall, I believe it only serves to cloud and contaminate one?s true perception of the thing. This building communicates so loudly on such a fundamentally visceral level that I feel it is on these terms most of all by which it should be evaluated. Almost invariably, people have an instant emotional reaction to this building. It is one of revulsion, loathing, and general negativity. Why do we feel the need to think this reaction away? Seeing that such a reaction is so universal, don?t you think it is interesting, important and indicative of something real?


I'm all for knocking down City Hall and attempting to bring life back to Scolley Square. I think Kallman and McKinnell?s monster is a perversion of architecture, a symbol of undemocratic government, and a necrotic legion in the fabric of Boston. Urbanistically, it is the singularity around which that black hole called Government Center swirls.


I don?t believe that it is worth preserving on the grounds that it is some virtuoso example of that flash in the pan architectural fad known as Brutalism. IMO, there are countless better, far more interesting examples of the style in existence. The work of Gottfried Bohm and Fritz Wotruba, for example, make City Hall's tectonic voodoo, which Ablarc writes so passionately about, look downright pedestrian. Even Corbu and Rudolph had the good sense to take advantage of concrete's plasticity, unlike City Hall which is composed almost entirely of axonometric right angles. Not to mention that Kallman and McKinnel themselves have a much finer specimen of Brutalism in their Five Cent Saving Bank, IMO. Furthermore, City Hall is not original. It's a shameless riff on Corbusier's La Tourette. Perhaps all these Little Boston City Halls everyone keeps mentioning are actually Little LaTourette's?


Dont Worry, after City Hall is gone there will still be plenty more Brutalism you can visit. Chances are you wont even have to go very far ? just to your nearest parking garage. And isnt it interesting that Brutalism found its true calling as the style of choice for parking garages? I attribute this to the fact that cars are incapable of feeling alienated, impotent or afraid.


To be continued...
 
Justin, I have an Ivy League education, and have been to more than 30 countries. Does that make me qualified to have an opinion about City Hall? :)

In medicine one can prove empirically whether a given hypothesis is correct or not. How does one _prove_ that a building is good or bad? Justin would argue that only persons with the benefit of a particular education are qualified to judge. But based on what objective criteria? Is it the ability to speak a certain language? Does this not make academic architecture therefore a language such as cockney rhyming slang devised as a means to show who belongs to a given group, and who does not. City Hall fails as a building because it fails completely to connect to the people it is meant to serve. Indeed it seems to be designed to achieve the opposite - to tell the viewer that they do not belong to the ruling elite, do can not comprehend the affairs of government, and have no business to question authority. I look at City Hall and see a monument to cynicism, arrogance and contempt plunged like a stake into the heart of a city I love.

The elimination of City Hall may well be just the catharsis that Boston needs -- a means to symbolically exorcise the demons of the 60s, and show its NIMBYs that architects and city planners can create something for the greater good of the entire community, and not merely for the benefit of a few academics.
 
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