Condo complex proposed for 102-110 Broad St

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Boston developer eyes condos for Littlest Bar building
By Jerry Kronenberg
Friday, July 1, 2011


Boston developer David Goldman plans to build a luxury condo complex along the Rose Kennedy Greenway at 102-110 Broad St., which currently houses the Hub’s famous Littlest Bar.

Goldman disclosed in a letter made public today by the Boston Redevelopment Authority that he intends to develop a “luxury residential building” on the 7,840-square-foot site.

The developer’s company, New Boston Ventures, has disclosed online that it intends to build a 16-story tower with 54 condos, a health club, underground parking, a restaurant and an outdoor cafe.

Goldman noted in the BRA filing that he intends to “preserve and restore” the roughly 205-year-old warehouse on the site that currently houses the Littlest Bar and the Times Irish Pub and Restaurant.

Goldman did not immediately return a call seeking comment about his project.

A former aide to late Sen. Paul Tsongas, the builder has developed many high-profile Greater Boston condo projects over the years.

His New Boston Ventures firm is perhaps best known for cutting a deal to turn Salem’s 200-year-old former jail into condos.


Link
 
I thought the Littlest Bar was on Province Street? (and closed?)
 
More housing in this area is great news, but these existing buildings need to be protected. 102 Broad is a designated Boston Landmark.
 
briv said:
More housing in this area is great news, but these existing buildings need to be protected. 102 Broad is a designated Boston Landmark.
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Fenway Park is a designated Boston landmark too...that didn't stop the new owners from putting in new HD boards this past offseason...I don't think that the littlest bar will be in danger...
 
BostonUrbEx: the Littlest Bar moved.

briv: the article says he intends to preserve and restore an existing building. Is it the same one you mentioned?
 
MMC, surprisingly Fenway Park is not a designated city Landmark. 102 Broad is. I'm not so much worried about the Littlest Bar--which has only been there a couple of years--but rather the building it occupies. I believe it is one of the original existing structures built on Broad St when the street was first created on filled land in the early 1800s.

Ron, I was encouraged to read that the developer intends to preserve and restore these buildings. I hope he follows through and that his project is sensitive to these buildings. I would hate to see them butchered by careless development.
 
Wouldn't it be grand if, just once, the underground parking was not required? So we wouldn't have another garage curb cut marring the Greenway frontage? I've done a rough estimate that shows there are more auto egresses facing the Greenway than human ones. Of course decades of elevated artery help account for this and we can only hope that proposals such as this will change that fact. But, with minimum parking requirements even in the heart of downtown, who knows.
 
The old Salem jail (built 1813) that he restored.
After
jail-after.jpg


Before
jail-before.jpg


The warden's house after. Pic is to big, so just a link.
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/40672904
 
It's sad that prisons built over a century ago were built to higher standards than "luxury" construction today.
 
My view is that construction quality went down in the United States in the postwar period as part of the housing boom. In order to make housing, and other construction, cheap enough for anyone to buy there was a race to make everything as inexpensive as possible. The public lost their taste for quality in favor of quantity and consumer culture (cars, postwar art, most tools, clothing) changed to reflect that in all aspects of life. Add in the Corbusian Cult conspiracy in academia and the cutthroat nature of developers to complete the mediocre world we now live in.
 
Mayor Menino's Crohn's said:
Private contractors have something to do with that I think. Then again, prison isn't supposed to be the Ramada Inn.
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That statement would only hold any water if post-war housing projects were the nicest buildings on the skyline. As it happens, they are (by a wide margin) the worst.

Agree with Lurker: The combination of new mechanized processes and the cult of modernism in academia led to a sharp, sharp divide between pre-war and post-war architecture.

Pretty much anything in this country built before WWII is beautiful; pretty much everything built after it has been hideous (excepting a disproportionately large -- when compared with commercial buildings -- amount of suburban residential construction, where modernism was never fully accepted). Once developers and their architects realized they too could do Lever House -- and that it would be much cheaper to do a cheap knock-off of it than to build a Deco high-rise -- there was no turning back.
 
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Broad St. plan may make Littlest Bar homeless again
By Jerry Kronenberg
Saturday, July 2, 2011


A Hub developer has big plans for the site of Boston’s famous Littlest Bar.

New Boston Ventures LLC told the Boston Redevelopment Authority in a letter made public yesterday that it wants to build an upscale 16-story, 54-unit condo complex at the bar’s 102-110 Broad St. home. The 7,800-square-foot parcel currently houses the Littlest Bar and the adjacent Times Irish Pub & Restaurant.

It’s not clear whether the two watering holes can stay.

But New Boston told the BRA that it plans to “preserve and restore” the 206-year-old former warehouse designed by Charles Bulfinch that currently hosts the pubs, adding several floors of new residences above.

The firm said the complex will also include a ground-floor restaurant and an outdoor cafe that opens onto the adjacent Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway.

New Boston, which didn’t return calls seeking comment, also indicated in separate online materials that it wants to include a health club and underground parking as part of the development.

Littlest Bar co-owner Patrick Grace said he’s only heard rumors about the builder’s plans, but said he’s ready to find a new location if necessary.

“We have a good name, and there are plenty of places around to move to,” Grace said.

The Littlest Bar — so named because it originally had room for just 38 patrons — has lost its home once before.

The saloon operated on Province Street from 1945 to 2006, but closed when the landlord there decided to build condos.

Grace reopened three years later in the Financial District, offering space for 120 patrons but retaining the Littlest Bar name.

The entrepreneur admits his new location has meant a change in clientele.

He said the bar now caters to “mostly financial people and lawyers,” whereas the original site attracted “people from all walks of life. It was a kind of place where the wife went shopping and husband went for a ‘scoop.’ ”
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Link
 
itchy said:
That statement would only hold any water if post-war housing projects were the nicest buildings on the skyline. As it happens, they are (by a wide margin) the worst.

Agree with Lurker: The combination of new mechanized processes and the cult of modernism in academia led to a sharp, sharp divide between pre-war and post-war architecture.

Pretty much anything in this country built before WWII is beautiful; pretty much everything built after it (excepting a disproportionately large -- when compared with commercial buildings -- amount of suburban residential construction, where modernism was never fully accepted). Once developers and their architects realized they too could do Lever House -- and that it would be much cheaper to do a cheap knock-off of it than to build a Deco high-rise -- there was no turning back.
Click to expand...

Take a look at Tom Wolfe's from Bauhaus to our House -- he talks to unemployed stone masons (in Italy) who contradicted the claims of "Johnson and company" made to their clients - that the reason no one does the kind of stone work anymore is that there are any stone masons available

Wolfe also explains the legerdemain, performed by Hugh Stubbins on Citcorp Center -- he touted the mono-pitch roof for its environmental benefits (solar dryer for the aircondtioning) while hiding the true animus of Bauhaus - Internationalists for the traditional pitched roof because it had connotation of either the crown or the church -- both of which were an anathema to the Bauhaus socialists. Bauhaus however being practical Germans they realized that in snowy places that even the best socialist workers housing might have trouble with snow and that a pitch can keep the roof from collapsing -- they allowed the roof to be mono-pitched to keep with socialist dreams while accounting for mother nature.

So in the guise of early environmental awareness the Stubbins tweaked the nose of the customer (Walter Wriston CEO CitiiCorp) who was building the "cathedral to commerce" -- Stubins by put the roof for German socialist workers housing upon Wriston's Cathedral to Commerce" -- great story -- great book!

Can't resist one more -- Wolfe -- the towers along Park Avenue built in the 50's and 60's look like the boxes that the towers were packed inside
 
I'm less worried about the Littlest, and much more worried about the Times. I'm a fan of that place, the location has always been great, but I've always thought they were not capitalizing on the location. The open lot on the corner that sometimes has seating, but never seems to be a great outdoor party has seemed primed for construction (although a little small, it obviously had something there before). Open lots along the greenway should be hot commodities.

Now if this were about a development for the surface parking lot across from the end of India Street. We wouldn't have to worry about historic buildings.
 
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