City Hall Discussion - Redevelopment - Preservation - Relocation

[Equilibria]

Architecture is a visual medium, though. Something can grow on you, sure, but I don't think it's legit to tell someone they "just don't get it" when they say it's ugly. On aesthetics alone, an architect who finds themselves being defended that way often is not a good architect.

 

[chrisbrat]

Screw the internet, I love it

If the building itself wasn't dragged down by an awful "plaza" -- or, better yet, if it had the great one it and the city deserve -- then I suspect folks would think much more kindly towards City Hall. Taken as a whole experience, the area is grim and unpleasant, but the building is excellent. Guilt by proximity.

 

[bdurden]

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For this reason alone it must be preserved at any cost.

 

[Charlie_mta]

I remember hearing that when the mock-up for the new City Hall was first unveiled to the Boston City Council in the 1960s, one of the Councilmen asked, "Where are the gas pumps?"

 

[HenryAlan]

I don't think it's legit to tell someone they "just don't get it" when they say it's ugly.

I realize it may have come off that way, but what I really meant was that a lot of the hate is not based on any kind of serious study of the building.

 

[Equilibria]

I realize it may have come off that way, but what I really meant was that a lot of the hate is not based on any kind of serious study of the building.

I get it, but also you can't ask passersby to make a serious study of the building before forming their opinion. To me it feels like this, but for buildings:

 

[type001]

I am on nobody’s bandwagon.

 

[SlothofDespond]

It's bad on it's own. It's made worse by the plaza. The awfulness is compounded by the surrounding buildings like Center Plaza and the pedestrian dead zone that is the JFK tower and its attached landscraper.

The whole area is a disaster of urban design, and intentionally so because the people who razed the city that was there in the 60s did it because they hated the city and the people who lived in it. It's not just a building, it's a monument symbolizing the power of the strong over the weak. And of course it's almost too on the nose that a picture that resembles Big Brother hangs over the entrance of City Hall looking down on everyone who enters.

 

[Charlie_mta]

It's bad on it's own. It's made worse by the plaza. The awfulness is compounded by the surrounding buildings like Center Plaza and the pedestrian dead zone that is the JFK tower and it's attached landscraper.

The whole area is a disaster of urban design, and intentionally so because the people took razed the city that was there in the 60s did it because they hated the city and the people who lived in it. It's not just a building, it's a monument symbolizing the power of the strong over the weak. And of course it's almost too on the nose that a picture that resembles Big Brother hangs over the entrance of City Hall looking down on everyone who enters.

I agree. I grew up in that era, a teenager in the 1960s, and at the time was keenly interested in, and followed, Boston planning developments. Everything you said about why GC happened and why it was designed the way it was, is right on. The same goes for the Charles River Park development. For both of these, the goal was to suburbanize the city core to try to lure people back who had fled the city for the suburbs after WW II. So yes, the planners for this disaster did literally hate the city, blitzing large fine-grained, dense multi-use districts, and replacing them with vast open dead spaces, grotesque silent buildings standing alone like anti-urban monuments, virtually no retail, wide sweeping highway-like streets, large super blocks, and no human scale. They couldn't have come up with a worse anti-urban, lonely, desolate, and ugly landscape.

 

[RandomWalk]

Conversely, North Cambridge narrowly avoided a similar fate with various highway plans. Now it’s got a group of vocal NIMBYs trying to preserve it in amber.

 

[Charlie_mta]

Conversely, North Cambridge narrowly avoided a similar fate with various highway plans. Now it’s got a group of vocal NIMBYs trying to preserve it in amber.

Yeah, the pendulum can swing too far one way or the other.

 

[Ruairi]

A lot of people just don't understand what they are looking at, or haven't really looked at the building in the first place. There are reasonable critiques, by all means, but much of the hate is just thoughtless bandwagon reactions. Count me with @Scott on this!

If a lot of people dont understand what they ar looking at with regard to the most important public building in the city, it's a design failure.

 

[JumboBuc]

If a lot of people dont understand what they ar looking at with regard to the most important public building in the city, it's a design failure.

I hear ya, but City Hall is far from the most important public building in the city.

 

[LtKije]

For what it's worth, I recently met someone who's worked for the city, and he said the building is an absolute joy to work in as an employee, and the design encourages collaboration. Not something you can say for every brutalist building, and not something an internet critic would consider.

 

[chrisbrat]

For what it's worth, I recently met someone who's worked for the city, and he said the building is an absolute joy to work in as an employee, and the design encourages collaboration. Not something you can say for every brutalist building, and not something an internet critic would consider.

Glad you posted this ^^^. I also have a close friend who works in City Hall and he's equally effusive about what a great space it is to be in, professionally.

 

[DBM]

They couldn't have come up with a worse anti-urban, lonely, desolate, and ugly landscape.

Prince Of Anti-Urbanist Design Le Corb says, tiens ma biere*

*(hold my beer)

 

[DBM]

I remember hearing that when the mock-up for the new City Hall was first unveiled to the Boston City Council in the 1960s, one of the Councilmen asked, "Where are the gas pumps?"

In the 1960s, then-Mayor John Collins reportedly gasped as the design was first unveiled, and someone in the room blurted out, "What the hell is that?"

https://architectuul.com/architecture/boston-city-hall

 

[Charlie_mta]

In the 1960s, then-Mayor John Collins reportedly gasped as the design was first unveiled, and someone in the room blurted out, "What the hell is that?"

https://architectuul.com/architecture/boston-city-hall

Interesting article and website.

 

[stick n move]

I actually on its face dont even think its that ugly. Its kinda cool looking and a decent example of brutalism. It would look pretty cool… somewhere else other than smack dab in the center of downtown. What I dont like is how the area is completely dead and soulless and clashes so “brutally” with the rest of the cityscape around it. That example that gets posted here every once in a while is exactly what a city like boston should have. Sucks that we dont. It also sucks that city hall is now so famous for sucking that its become iconic and would never be torn down. Its been bad for so long that now its almost good in a twisted kind of way.

Damnit.

Boston’s City Hall Plaza as it ought to be

By David Brussat April 29, 2010 Illustrations: Above, Boston’s City Hall Plaza design by Aaron Helfand. Below, Scolley Square; Helfand’s Boston City Hall; ground plans of Siena, Boston&…

classicistne.wordpress.com

 

[SlothofDespond]

Sucks that we dont. It also sucks that city hall is now so famous for sucking that its become iconic and would never be torn down. Its been bad for so long that now its almost good in a twisted kind of way.
[/URL]

"Politicians, ugly buildings, and whores all get respectable if they last long enough" -Noah Cross, Chinatown

In any event, the Government Services Building down the street is a much bigger problem IMO. That thing kills an entire city block that should be vibrant and filled with store fronts and density. I'll be more than happy to do yeoman's work telling anyone who misses it that it was a monstrosity that choked the life out of the city and needed to be destroyed so the area could thrive again. If people want to see a mid century masterpiece wander over to the Christian Science Plaza and take that in. The city doesn't need to be a living exhibit of the disasterpiece examples too.

Conversely, North Cambridge narrowly avoided a similar fate with various highway plans. Now it’s got a group of vocal NIMBYs trying to preserve it in amber.

I don't agree that's a pendulum example. I think with NIMBYs in Boston neighborhoods and surrounding towns we're dealing with similar fear of change, cities, and the people who live in them. The residents trying to protect their neighborhoods from development got theirs and they don't want to allow the area to adapt and change to a Boston area that needs more and denser housing and an expansion of the urban core. Don't forget that the destruction of the West End was designed to displace the poorer West End neighborhood with a bunch of uninviting tower in a park residences for wealthier people. There's no doubt in my mind that there is generally an undercurrent of the strong and wealthy punching down on the poor and weak in NIMBYism, just like there was with mid-century urban renewal.