City Hall Plaza Revamp | Government Center

Dr. Rosen Rosen said:
I disagree with all the anti-openspace sentiments. It’s a great space for rallies and fairs - It’s adaptable and can host many kinds of public gatherings. Like for example the B&B Circus a few years back, or a hip hop musical festival the next week. Hardscaped openspace (bricked, no less!) is an enviable asset to many other cities.

You just need to picture it with thousands of people activating the open space.
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It is excellent for outdoor gatherings of any type -- concerts, championship celebrations, beer garden, skating rink, etc.

The problem is those programmed events happen maybe 20-40 days a year. Which means that for about 325 days a year you have an almost entirely unused massive swath of windswepted acreage smack dab in the middle of the city that benefits nobody.

Piazza del Campo, Plaza Mayor, Old Town Square in Prague, Piazza San Marco, and many other European plazas and squares (which, ironically, Boston's City Hall Plaza was intended to emulate) all are also suitable for such programmed events and celebrations and are enclosed on all (or most) sides by retail, dining, and residential -- meaning they are in active use all year long.

It's not like by adding restaurants, clubs, etc along the perimeter of the Plaza you suddenly *couldn't* have celebrations there when the Celtics win (fingers crossed) or that the area couldn't host Pride events or whatever else. It'd just make the area an actual destination and a place people want to be, rather than a windy lot that people race to get through if they find themselves unlucky enough to be there.
 
Perhaps Bostons new ‘Nightlife Czar’ can activate the space more often throughout the year.

Also, it sorta sounds like you’re describing what Faenuel Hall already provides for the mixed-use retail experience. The Seaport too.
 
Dr. Rosen Rosen said:
Also, it sorta sounds like you’re describing what Faenuel Hall already provides for the mixed-use retail experience. The Seaport too.
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Sure, but it's not a one-and-done situation. It's not like, "Nah, scrap the South End -- we already have the North End and who needs *multiple* neighborhoods with density and lots of retail and dining options amidst the housing."

Fanueil Hall is what it is and it's fine for certain folks, same for the Seaport (and Newbury St, Kenmore, Allston, etc.), but City Hall Plaza -- if ever successful at presenting in a manner to the European plazas it purports to draw inspiration from -- would be its own distinct thing with it's own unique charm just like all those other destinations or neighborhoods.

My main point/gripe is that it's the center of a "Global City" and for most of the year it is uttelry vacant and provides no benefits to the citizens of the area or tourists. It's just useless when there isn't a special celebration or event of some type. And particularly given what USED to be there it's pretty offensive. It's a square of "urban renewal" that is just sitting, razed for decades like a monument to, and perverse celebration of, how shortsighted and reckless we were in destroying Scollay and the West End.

That the only "entertainment options" on that side of City Hall are fucking Dubliner (bleagh) and 7-11 over in Center Plaza is pathetic.
 
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chrisbrat said:
It is excellent for outdoor gatherings of any type -- concerts, championship celebrations, beer garden, skating rink, etc.

The problem is those programmed events happen maybe 20-40 days a year. Which means that for about 325 days a year you have an almost entirely unused massive swath of windswepted acreage smack dab in the middle of the city that benefits nobody.

Piazza del Campo, Plaza Mayor, Old Town Square in Prague, Piazza San Marco, and many other European plazas and squares (which, ironically, Boston's City Hall Plaza was intended to emulate) all are also suitable for such programmed events and celebrations and are enclosed on all (or most) sides by retail, dining, and residential -- meaning they are in active use all year long.

It's not like by adding restaurants, clubs, etc along the perimeter of the Plaza you suddenly *couldn't* have celebrations there when the Celtics win (fingers crossed) or that the area couldn't host Pride events or whatever else. It'd just make the area an actual destination and a place people want to be, rather than a windy lot that people race to get through if they find themselves unlucky enough to be there.
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Agreed. At the moment, the plaza is surrounded by several lanes of motorized private automobile traffic.

Here's what lies west of the plaza:
1678581800116.png


And to the east of the plaza:
1678581852294.png


You've got 5 lanes of motorcar traffic west of the plaza and 6 lanes of single occupancy CO2 emissions to the east of the plaza. This means the city hall plaza is completely standalone, isolated from retail, dining, or entertainment. You have to walk up to a beg button, and wait for 3-5 minutes for the signal to change, to get to any retail or dining from the plaza.

Take a look at a plaza in Europe, for example, Trondheim, Norway:
1678582101033.png


With single occupancy motorized traffic kicked out, this opens up the plaza to more than just scheduled events, then you have a valuable space for entertainment, dining, and retail, easily accessible and safe and comfortable for people to be in. Boston City Hall is accessible, but it is a hassle to have to press a beg button, wait 3-5 minutes for the traffic signal to change, and cross 5-6 lanes of motorized traffic.

If City Hall Plaza is going to be isolated from anything else, then it's not a very useful space all on it's own, considering that scheduled events only happen so infrequently. You either need to have amenties on site, within the same block, or the streets surrounding Boston City Hall will need to be traffic calmed. Eliminate street parking, restrict the streets to bicycles and pedestrians around City Hall, maybe convert some of the space to various amenties, or there may be other ideas. The area needs to be a destination, not a place for suburbanites to drive through along.
 
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Dr. Rosen Rosen said:
You just need to picture it with thousands of people activating the open space.
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I know I've been pretty consistently negative about City Hall/the plaza for a long time, but this update does nothing to change my feelings about it and I totally agree with the other posters that this completely sucks. How many thousands of people would WANT to "activate" this horrible, barren, useless waste of a space - except as a pass-through?

Like, frankly, I think your photos speak for themselves (not knocking the photos/photographer; they accurately capture the space from my IRL visits). I know this is winter in Boston, but man that's friggin bleak.

Dr. Rosen Rosen said:
View attachment 35123View attachment 35126View attachment 35124
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Wow, so in the summer, the limited trees and all the asphalt for motorcars surrounding it, would mean this part of City Hall Plaza would be baking heat in the summer. The path of the summer sunshine tracks just above the buildings, so it would be exposed to sunlight even deep well into the evening hours.

I wouldn't be too surprised if the plaza itself is literally just a pass through for commuters trying to pass through it as fast as possible. Noone would want to stay there since it's not a interesting or comfortable walk. Stark contrast to the European plaza example.

Especially with work from home a big phenomanon in the US specifically, not Europe/Asia, Boston City Hall Plaza is in dire need of more big ideas to actually activate the space in the post-COVID era.
 
Dr. Rosen Rosen said:
I disagree with all the anti-openspace sentiments. It’s a great space for rallies and fairs - It’s adaptable and can host many kinds of public gatherings. Like for example the B&B Circus a few years back, or a hip hop musical festival the next week. Hardscaped openspace (bricked, no less!) is an enviable asset to many other cities.

You just need to picture it with thousands of people activating the open space.
Click to expand...

Fairgrounds are generally good additions to cities, but they’re never located right in the city center specifically because they aren’t used year-round.
 
Looks like more green will be added to the plaza…perhaps it’ll be less wind blown, more pleasant gathering spots, while also allowing east pass-through? Maybe it’s more comparable to NYC city park…like a Bryant or Washington Park?

79D7364D-AC63-40A2-B314-630BA0C29B94.png


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The ironic thing about Government Center is that I think some of the reluctance to redevelop it in any substantial, comprehensive way stems from major urban renewal projects like GC itself. We now recognize that demolishing entire neighborhoods into the ground and displacing thousands of people and replacing these places with single use fortresses was probably not the best way to address the challenges we faced in 1950s, 60s, 70s. So lesson learned, we shy away from major redevelopment, preserve buildings and spaces, and instead cook up half-assed plans to "re-activate" the space.

In the case of Government Center, the problem is that the bar is so low that I don't think that there's any way we could fuck it up more than we already have. I mean, if we assigned any area high school class the responsibility to plan the space from scratch, I can't imagine it would be worse than what we have. And it's especially frustrating because, as chrisbrat noted, what used to exist there was a lively mixed-use neighborhood. I'm sure that back in the 60s Scollay Square was rough around the edges, even slummy, but I'm also reasonably confident it would have redeveloped into a healthy successful place, like virtually all of Central Boston, if we hadn't messed with it so drastically in the first place.

I'm all for historic preservation - even of mid-century buildings/places not popularly regarded as historic - but for civic spaces like GC we have to start these conversations by first asking if this is a successful public space? If the answer is no, then IMHO, we need to reconsider our approach to preservation. Because preservation for the sake of preservation, or because some building is a great example of a particular architectural style, seems like an extremely high price to pay to also preserve a largely destitute public space mostly devoid of public activity in the center of the city. GC is the center of Boston, surrounded by mostly vibrant neighborhoods --we should aim higher to create a place that we can all embrace.
 
I think one has to look at GC through the lens of yesteryear, not through a contemporary prism.

Circa 1950-1970, Boston was in a marked decline. A decline experienced by most other New England cities,. Between 1950 and 1970, Boston lost about 20 percent of its population. In 1974, a Federal judge ordered that Boston's public schools be de-segregated. This added to the flight of Whites from Boston, a continuing decline that persisted until 2000. The White population in 1950 was nearly double the White population in 2000. The economic engine of Massachusetts was not Boston, but Route 128. In 1957, there were 99 companies along 128; in 1965, 574; in 1973, 1,212. That's where corporate and investor money was going.

This was an era when major cities was threatened with bankruptcy. New York City was bailed out by the Federal government in 1974.

From Wiki,
[Mayor John F.] Collins inherited a city in fiscal distress. Property taxes in Boston were twice as high as in New York or Chicago, even as the city's tax base was declining. Collins established a close relationship with a group of local business leaders known as the Vault, cut taxes in five of his eight years in office and imposed budget cuts on city government. Collins' administration focused on downtown redevelopment: Collins brought the urban planner Edward J. Logue (who had been serving as the administrator of the New Haven Redevelopment Agency) to Boston to lead the Boston Redevelopment Authority and Collins' administration supervised the construction of the Prudential Center complex and of Government Center.[11][14][15]

When Collins lost his campaign for Massachusetts Attorney General in 1954, only one new private office building had appeared on the city skyline since 1929.[16] One in five of the city's housing units were classified as dilapidated or deteriorating and the city was ranked lowest among major cities in building starts, while the only growing industries in the city were government and universities (leading to a narrowing tax base) and the city already had a higher number of municipal employees per capita than any major city in the United States.[17] Urban renewal would affect 3,223 acres of the city, be highly profitable for the city's business community, and by the 1970s, led to Boston having the fourth-largest central-business-district office space in the United States as well as the highest construction rates.[13] However, the city would lose more dwelling units than it would gain during the 1960s as Collins' budget priorities led to a decrease in city services outside of downtown, particularly parks, playgrounds, and schools in residential neighborhoods, and would often displace poor blacks and whites into neighborhoods with higher rents.[18]
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The Federal government gave the city $40 million to help pay for what became Government Center. Walter Gropius was chosen as the architect of the Federal building.

The January 1958 planning documents can be found here. Be aware, by today's standards, these are very superficial and simplistic.
https://archives.lib.state.ma.us/bitstream/handle/2452/238582/ocm18387967.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

When the financial boat is sinking, and there is not even half the money to fix everything, there are no easy choices, and little time to debate.
 
stellarfun said:
I think one has to look at GC through the lens of yesteryear, not through a contemporary prism.

Circa 1950-1970, Boston was in a marked decline. A decline experienced by most other New England cities,. Between 1950 and 1970, Boston lost about 20 percent of its population. In 1974, a Federal judge ordered that Boston's public schools be de-segregated. This added to the flight of Whites from Boston, a continuing decline that persisted until 2000. The White population in 1950 was nearly double the White population in 2000. The economic engine of Massachusetts was not Boston, but Route 128. In 1957, there were 99 companies along 128; in 1965, 574; in 1973, 1,212. That's where corporate and investor money was going.

This was an era when major cities was threatened with bankruptcy. New York City was bailed out by the Federal government in 1974.

From Wiki,


The Federal government gave the city $40 million to help pay for what became Government Center. Walter Gropius was chosen as the architect of the Federal building.

The January 1958 planning documents can be found here. Be aware, by today's standards, these are very superficial and simplistic.
https://archives.lib.state.ma.us/bitstream/handle/2452/238582/ocm18387967.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

When the financial boat is sinking, and there is not even half the money to fix everything, there are no easy choices, and little time to debate.
Click to expand...
Absolutely spot on assessment of post-WW II Boston stuck in the doldrums and outshined by the emergent, young suburbs. GC and Charles River Park were built at the time to pump life-giving excitement and juice into the floundering city core. But they're long past serving that purpose and are now a liability. Just as the old elevated Central Artery was plowed through the city's fabric as emergency life support to save a dying city, it too wore out its welcome, and so it was replaced with a tunneled expressway topped by a linear park. There is now a similar need to revamp the outdated GC as well. Carve up City Hall Plaza, eliminate about 3/4th of it, maybe have a much narrower plaza from Cambridge Street to City Hall, with the rest of the area as small streets with a mix of low/medium/high rise buildings containing retail, business, and residential. That's what I would like to see to bring this section of the city stuck in the 1960s back into the city of today, and finally into the 21st century, There is no need to preserve these dysfunctional artifacts from the 1960s in perpetuity.
 
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Delvin4519 said:
You have to walk up to a beg button, and wait for 3-5 minutes for the signal to change, to get to any retail or dining from the plaza.
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Well presented post, except it seems you forgot we are talking about Boston here. Nobody is waiting 3-5 minutes to cross the street. We're the jaywalking capital of the United States of America!
 
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