Custom House Tower observation deck
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Ron Newman
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Call the hotel. They'll tell you. I don't want to post information that is years old and may no longer be accurate.
kz1000ps
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Made you look!
Yeah, there's the top of the Pru, but there are other amazing views - if you know where to find them
By Kathleen Burge, Globe Staff | July 16, 2006
Not long ago, it wasn't hard to find a perch, high above the blasting horns and human frenzy, to behold this city: a view of buildings poking up unevenly above asphalt earth and harbor froth.
But many of the old views have disappeared, at least to the public eye. The sight of the city 60 floors below from the top of the glassy John Hancock Building is no more, since the observatory was closed after the Sept. 11 attacks and is reemerging as office space. The swank Bay Tower Room restaurant on the 33d floor of 60 State St. has been turned into the State Room , open only for private functions.
Spinnaker , the formerly revolving restaurant at the top of the Hyatt Regency Cambridge , stands still these days, and is also available only to groups. And Marriott's Custom House now allows public visitors to ascend to the building's 26th floor observation deck, accompanied by a concierge, just twice a day. The only giant that has kept access unfettered is the 50th-floor Skywalk Observatory at the Prudential Tower .
The views, if more elusive, are still there. Mayor Thomas M. Menino , who marvels at the sight of ``three corners of the world" from the State Room, also likes to gaze upon his city from the top of Metropolitan Avenue in Roslindale , where the skyline rises behind a long row of houses. And closer to his own home in Hyde Park, he admires the view of the Blue Hills from Fairmount Hill . ``You feel like you're in New Hampshire," he says.
Menino also says he was captivated a few years ago by one view you hope you'll never see: the vista from a bed in Brigham and Women's Hospital , where he was being treated for Crohn's disease . Here are some other astonishing views you won't find listed in most tour books:
The public view from this office building's 14th-floor observation deck is an atonement: When the building's developer added one more floor than his permit allowed, state officials required him to add a viewing deck open to the public. You must sign in at the front desk, and the rules are many: No purses, no bags, no electronic devices. Surveillance cameras, you are told, will be watching your every step. ``Basically, you go up with the clothes on your back," the security guard says, in a friendly way. The rules are courtesy of the US Department of Homeland Security, he says, because the building overlooks Logan International Airport . On a recent weekday afternoon, only a pigeon is strutting around the corner of the deck, which is equipped with free tourist-style telescopes.
Other Boston views:
Madonna Queen National Shrine 150 Orient Ave., Orient Heights, East Boston
A 35-foot-tall statue of the Virgin Mary sculpted by a Jewish man, a nursing home named after a Catholic saint who helped orphans, and a stunning view of the city: This shrine at the apex of Orient Heights has spectacular vistas and a quirky history. The bronze statue of Mary is a copy of one created by a sculptor who found refuge from the Nazis with the Don Orione order in Rome. A replica was later made and shipped to the Don Orione Nursing Home -- originally named The Old Ladies Home when it opened with four residents in 1959, said Nancy Walsh , the home's administrator. The Don Orione Fathers finished building the shrine, which sits above a large plaza and a four-story building constructed on the side of the steep hill, in the 1980s. Open daily.
Roof of Museum of Science parking garage Science Park
The drive up and up through the aging green garage doesn't seem promising. Yet at the top, the dingy low ceilings give way to a plateau of concrete that gazes upon a perfect view of the city sprawled out along the Charles River. Across the Longfellow Bridge , the city's tallest buildings line up, from the Hancock to the Pru. Parking is free if you stay less than a half-hour.
The Rotunda Boston Harbor Hotel
The Boston Harbor Hotel doesn't make it easy to find the Rotunda, the round room above the 60-foot arch at Rowes Wharf . But ask at the front desk, and they will send you to the room that straddles the 9th and 10th floors and offers spectacular views over the harbor and across the future Rose Kennedy Greenway into the heart of the city. Open daily from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Belle Isle Marsh Bennington Street, East Boston
From the wooden observation deck, the city's tall buildings look like a blue-gray monolith rising from a far land. This is one of the most distant views of the city from within its borders, but perhaps the most pastoral. As you climb up the wooden observation tower, you can hear birds singing from the tall grasses that fill much of this lush, 241-acre marsh. The parking lot is off Bennington Street, just before Suffolk Downs race track.
Piers Park Sumner Street, East Boston LoPresti Park Marginal Street, East Boston
These two parks, a half-mile from each other, are monuments to the old and the new East Boston. LoPresti fills a corner of the neighborhood's waterfront, near the hulking Tobin Bridge and the former site of the Maverick Gardens housing project. Teenage boys perfect their jump shots on the basketball courts, and beyond the shore, rows of wooden pilings rot. Not far away at the $17 million Piers Park, the grass is lush and the walkways are paved with brick. But views do not discriminate, and the panorama across the harbor from both parks is magnificent.
MBTA Inner Harbor ferry Long Wharf to Charlestown
The cool thing about the view from the little boat that spends the day looping back and forth between Long Wharf in Boston and Flagship Wharf in Charlestown is that it keeps changing over the 10 minutes it takes to glide across this corner of the harbor. The ferry, a bargain at $1.50 each way, departs at least every half-hour. The schedule is available online at www.mbta.com/traveling_t/pdf/boats/routeF4.pdf
Peters Hill , The Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University Jamaica Plain
From the top of a grassy hill where bobolinks nest, you can see the city rising from the horizon, shimmering in the summer heat. The grounds are open sunrise to sunset every day of the year. For a map, go to www.arboretum.harvard.edu/visitors/map.html.
Binford Park Mt. Washington Street, Fort Point Channel
It's not the best view of Boston, with the gangling US Postal Service buildings stretching down the far shore of the Fort Point Channel . But one of the city's newest parks, dedicated last year, offers an unusual glimpse of the city skyline, across a long open section of the channel, beside the Gillette plant. Binford Park was once the site where huge concrete sections of the Ted Williams Tunnel were shaped, floated into the channel, and moved into place.
Kathleen Burge can be reached at kburge@globe.com.
Send us YOUR favorite vista
Do you have a good place to view the city or surroundings? Maybe an undiscovered gem of a vantage point? Share it with City Weekly readers. Write to City Weekly at ciweek@globe.com. Please include your name, a daytime phone number, and your neighborhood or community. Responses may be edited for length and grammar.
Yeah, there's the top of the Pru, but there are other amazing views - if you know where to find them
By Kathleen Burge, Globe Staff | July 16, 2006
Not long ago, it wasn't hard to find a perch, high above the blasting horns and human frenzy, to behold this city: a view of buildings poking up unevenly above asphalt earth and harbor froth.
But many of the old views have disappeared, at least to the public eye. The sight of the city 60 floors below from the top of the glassy John Hancock Building is no more, since the observatory was closed after the Sept. 11 attacks and is reemerging as office space. The swank Bay Tower Room restaurant on the 33d floor of 60 State St. has been turned into the State Room , open only for private functions.
Spinnaker , the formerly revolving restaurant at the top of the Hyatt Regency Cambridge , stands still these days, and is also available only to groups. And Marriott's Custom House now allows public visitors to ascend to the building's 26th floor observation deck, accompanied by a concierge, just twice a day. The only giant that has kept access unfettered is the 50th-floor Skywalk Observatory at the Prudential Tower .
The views, if more elusive, are still there. Mayor Thomas M. Menino , who marvels at the sight of ``three corners of the world" from the State Room, also likes to gaze upon his city from the top of Metropolitan Avenue in Roslindale , where the skyline rises behind a long row of houses. And closer to his own home in Hyde Park, he admires the view of the Blue Hills from Fairmount Hill . ``You feel like you're in New Hampshire," he says.
Menino also says he was captivated a few years ago by one view you hope you'll never see: the vista from a bed in Brigham and Women's Hospital , where he was being treated for Crohn's disease . Here are some other astonishing views you won't find listed in most tour books:
The public view from this office building's 14th-floor observation deck is an atonement: When the building's developer added one more floor than his permit allowed, state officials required him to add a viewing deck open to the public. You must sign in at the front desk, and the rules are many: No purses, no bags, no electronic devices. Surveillance cameras, you are told, will be watching your every step. ``Basically, you go up with the clothes on your back," the security guard says, in a friendly way. The rules are courtesy of the US Department of Homeland Security, he says, because the building overlooks Logan International Airport . On a recent weekday afternoon, only a pigeon is strutting around the corner of the deck, which is equipped with free tourist-style telescopes.
Other Boston views:
Madonna Queen National Shrine 150 Orient Ave., Orient Heights, East Boston
A 35-foot-tall statue of the Virgin Mary sculpted by a Jewish man, a nursing home named after a Catholic saint who helped orphans, and a stunning view of the city: This shrine at the apex of Orient Heights has spectacular vistas and a quirky history. The bronze statue of Mary is a copy of one created by a sculptor who found refuge from the Nazis with the Don Orione order in Rome. A replica was later made and shipped to the Don Orione Nursing Home -- originally named The Old Ladies Home when it opened with four residents in 1959, said Nancy Walsh , the home's administrator. The Don Orione Fathers finished building the shrine, which sits above a large plaza and a four-story building constructed on the side of the steep hill, in the 1980s. Open daily.
Roof of Museum of Science parking garage Science Park
The drive up and up through the aging green garage doesn't seem promising. Yet at the top, the dingy low ceilings give way to a plateau of concrete that gazes upon a perfect view of the city sprawled out along the Charles River. Across the Longfellow Bridge , the city's tallest buildings line up, from the Hancock to the Pru. Parking is free if you stay less than a half-hour.
The Rotunda Boston Harbor Hotel
The Boston Harbor Hotel doesn't make it easy to find the Rotunda, the round room above the 60-foot arch at Rowes Wharf . But ask at the front desk, and they will send you to the room that straddles the 9th and 10th floors and offers spectacular views over the harbor and across the future Rose Kennedy Greenway into the heart of the city. Open daily from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Belle Isle Marsh Bennington Street, East Boston
From the wooden observation deck, the city's tall buildings look like a blue-gray monolith rising from a far land. This is one of the most distant views of the city from within its borders, but perhaps the most pastoral. As you climb up the wooden observation tower, you can hear birds singing from the tall grasses that fill much of this lush, 241-acre marsh. The parking lot is off Bennington Street, just before Suffolk Downs race track.
Piers Park Sumner Street, East Boston LoPresti Park Marginal Street, East Boston
These two parks, a half-mile from each other, are monuments to the old and the new East Boston. LoPresti fills a corner of the neighborhood's waterfront, near the hulking Tobin Bridge and the former site of the Maverick Gardens housing project. Teenage boys perfect their jump shots on the basketball courts, and beyond the shore, rows of wooden pilings rot. Not far away at the $17 million Piers Park, the grass is lush and the walkways are paved with brick. But views do not discriminate, and the panorama across the harbor from both parks is magnificent.
MBTA Inner Harbor ferry Long Wharf to Charlestown
The cool thing about the view from the little boat that spends the day looping back and forth between Long Wharf in Boston and Flagship Wharf in Charlestown is that it keeps changing over the 10 minutes it takes to glide across this corner of the harbor. The ferry, a bargain at $1.50 each way, departs at least every half-hour. The schedule is available online at www.mbta.com/traveling_t/pdf/boats/routeF4.pdf
Peters Hill , The Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University Jamaica Plain
From the top of a grassy hill where bobolinks nest, you can see the city rising from the horizon, shimmering in the summer heat. The grounds are open sunrise to sunset every day of the year. For a map, go to www.arboretum.harvard.edu/visitors/map.html.
Binford Park Mt. Washington Street, Fort Point Channel
It's not the best view of Boston, with the gangling US Postal Service buildings stretching down the far shore of the Fort Point Channel . But one of the city's newest parks, dedicated last year, offers an unusual glimpse of the city skyline, across a long open section of the channel, beside the Gillette plant. Binford Park was once the site where huge concrete sections of the Ted Williams Tunnel were shaped, floated into the channel, and moved into place.
Kathleen Burge can be reached at kburge@globe.com.
Send us YOUR favorite vista
Do you have a good place to view the city or surroundings? Maybe an undiscovered gem of a vantage point? Share it with City Weekly readers. Write to City Weekly at ciweek@globe.com. Please include your name, a daytime phone number, and your neighborhood or community. Responses may be edited for length and grammar.