Custom House Tower Photo Thread

AdamBC said:
And the only reason the tower was built was that it was an existing federal building getting some extra floors so Boston's height laws didn't apply and it's why it stayed the tallest building in Boston for so long.
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Yes, I realize that is how this tower skirted the extremely Draconian Boston height limits set at that time. There are still many anti-development types in the Boston area who believe this absurd height limit should be reinforced - back a number of decades ago the Boston Globe had an article alluding to such a movement whose core belief with respect to development was concentrating upon setting the height limit of all new buildings in Downtown Boston to 10 stories MAXIMUM, which would be right around that 125 FT height limit based upon 12 FT per floor superstructure build-out. Ridiculous! Not that we need to have every new building a high rise, but such a restriction upon development would obviously of course put the brakes on construction just about all together in the CBD, and in other areas of Boston as well where more and more mid-rise and shorter high rise are cropping up - Seaport, Brighton/Allston for example.
 
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I remember them giving the top (probably the whole thing, really) a serious power-wash. The difference was night and day -- and given that that must have been... I'm guessing 35ish years ago and it's still pretty clean and clear of soot speaks to how far we've come with air pollution. I mean, it doesn't hurt that the tip-top of the tower is no longer the primary exhaust outlet for the building's heating system (and that coal hadn't been the primary source of energy for quite a while), but still.
 
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chrisbrat said:
I remember them giving the top (probably the whole thing, really) a serious power-wash. The difference was night and day -- and given that that must have been... I'm guessing 35ish years ago and it's still pretty clean and clear of soot speaks to how far we've come with air pollution. I mean, it doesn't hurt that the tip-top of the tower is no longer the primary exhaust outlet for the building's heating system, but still.
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I think they redid the top a few years ago, around 2015. Check out this pic I found on flickr.

Custom House Clocktower by Hawkeye2011, on Flickr
 
oh i remember the customs house's "burka" from a few years back. IIRC that bout of work was actual structural repair, rather than power-washing or any purely aesthetic maintenance.
 
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