Dick’s House of Sports | Prudential Center | Back Bay

Unique--
Amazing character for Boston's revolutionary Boston's history.
Incredible architecture

John & Sam Adams along with John Hancock would be proud.

Keep those corporate soulless boxes developing for the masses. Make Boston Proud.

Definitely #1 in Traffic Congestion
 
Blackbird said:
Was Lord and Taylor any different?
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Lord and Taylor at least had an outward appearance of class, which IMO complemented the upscale urban setting of the Back Bay. Not to sound snobby, but does everything everywhere have to be at the lowest common denominator taste-wise?
 
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Charlie_mta said:
Lord and Taylor at least had an outward appearance of class, which IMO complemented the upscale urban setting of the Back Bay. Not to sound snobby, but does everything everywhere have to be at the lowest common denominator taste-wise?
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I kind of agree. To me it's more about facade's scale. It's a city street not a stroad. It needs to be seen from next to it, not across the mall parking lot, or at a glance from Route 1 at 80mph. It's post-modernist bleed over. The city scale buildout is now an odd request in America.
 
Charlie_mta said:
Lord and Taylor at least had an outward appearance of class, which IMO complemented the upscale urban setting of the Back Bay. Not to sound snobby, but does everything everywhere have to be at the lowest common denominator taste-wise?
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I understand your point, but I think that at least from the street perspective you're romanticizing the past a bit here. The Lord and Taylor looked like a big box, about what you'd find at any suburban mall, and now the Dicks looks like a differently colored big box.
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I don't think either iteration of this building can really be considered an architectural masterpiece. In terms the shift from an upscale department store to a sporting goods store and what that says about society:
  • People are more active than they used to be, especially with activities like jogging that aren't organized sports.
  • Universities are growing, BU has 4000 more students than it did 10 years ago. Therefore the number of people engaged with activities like school sports is also growing
  • People are shifting away from office work. If you're working from home you might as well be comfortable.
  • People are increasingly disinterested in formal wear, and would rather wear something easy and comfortable outside of the most formal of events like weddings or high level events.
So with all of these things in mind, a shift to a store that specializes in casual, comfortable clothing as well as sporting equipment makes sense. Is that a good or bad thing? I don't think it's either, really. Society's clothing preferences have never stayed static, and I don't doubt that sometime a new trend will overtake sportswear and stores like Dicks will either adapt or die off, just as their predecessors have.
 
TheRatmeister said:
I understand your point, but I think that at least from the street perspective you're romanticizing the past a bit here. The Lord and Taylor looked like a big box, about what you'd find at any suburban mall, and now the Dicks looks like a differently colored big box.
View attachment 49922
I don't think either iteration of this building can really be considered an architectural masterpiece. In terms the shift from an upscale department store to a sporting goods store and what that says about society:
  • People are more active than they used to be, especially with activities like jogging that aren't organized sports.
  • Universities are growing, BU has 4000 more students than it did 10 years ago. Therefore the number of people engaged with activities like school sports is also growing
  • People are shifting away from office work. If you're working from home you might as well be comfortable.
  • People are increasingly disinterested in formal wear, and would rather wear something easy and comfortable outside of the most formal of events like weddings or high level events.
So with all of these things in mind, a shift to a store that specializes in casual, comfortable clothing as well as sporting equipment makes sense. Is that a good or bad thing? I don't think it's either, really. Society's clothing preferences have never stayed static, and I don't doubt that sometime a new trend will overtake sportswear and stores like Dicks will either adapt or die off, just as their predecessors have.
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Fully agree.

That said, this does feel like replacing a Gucci store in Beverly Hills with a Dave & Buster’s or Chuck E Cheese, tonally.

There’s still an abundance of “highbrow” content in Back Bay, but I get (at least some of) the sentiment being expressed by a few on here.
 
chrisbrat said:
That said, this does feel like replacing a Gucci store in Beverly Hills with a Dave & Buster’s or Chuck E Cheese, tonally.
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This is only true if you consider Lord and Taylor to be high end. I'm fairly young, and statistically a majority of people in Boston are too. To me Lord and Taylor is just an expensive (By suruban mall standards) department store, it has essentially no brand value, which I think is the main difference.
 
JeffDowntown said:
The nature of the retail at this site is a minor part of the urban disconnect.

The real problem is a suburban style low-rise big-box retail building right on the Back Bay high spine. That is the design abomination.
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I agree. This site, in any kind of a rational world, would be occupied by an office/residential high rise having shops/bars/restaurants on the ground floor. I don't know how the gods of suburbia were allowed to plop down this Dick's white elephant onto this prime location perfect for high rise development.
 
Charlie_mta said:
Lord and Taylor at least had an outward appearance of class, which IMO complemented the upscale urban setting of the Back Bay. Not to sound snobby, but does everything everywhere have to be at the lowest common denominator taste-wise?
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I think that stretch of Boylston has always been a bit grittier. My earliest experiences of the blocks between Exeter and Mass Ave were connected to the dive bars that used to populate the area, like Dad's, Poorhouse, Bukowski's Tavern, etc. And even the more cultured elements tended toward avant garde, like the old ICA. In short, it was not the Commonwealth Mall section of the Back Bay. When that Marshals add mentioned up thread came along, I actually found it confusing, because I had not, up until that point, even really considered Boylston to be emblematic of the Back Bay anyway. And if we go back further in time, the entire Hynes/Prudential area was a frieght yard. Again, nothing fancy about these uses, but all of them certainly critical to urban life for the times.

Am I a fan of the current use? As a question of retail, I think it's fine. I missed City Sports when it closed, this is a few blocks down the street and bigger, but can satisfy an important niche. In terms of built environment, it's garbage, but that was also true when it was Lord and Taylor.
 
Lord and Taylor was nice, but not THAT nice. Better than JCPenney, but not as nice as Nordstrom’s, let alone Saks or Neiman’s.

The trend is a sad one I think. I’m not opposed to athletic wear or accessories, but it’s spilling over into everything, and it’s pushing out elegant nice things across all swaths of life.
 
This development would have made a lot more sense as a 50 story residential with the store at the bottom. It's a waste of prime real estate!

With that said I have been inhabiting other locations of this store over the last couple years. I bought my son a football and basketball, my daughter a soccer ball, and both kids tennis rackets and simple street hockey equipment. I also got myself a handful of dumbbells, plus a couple pairs of Adidas soccer training pants with zip-up pockets for riding roller coasters! It has been a useful store for my overall health and well being.
 
This is the truth-

The ongoing trend of corporate development transformation in historical areas and architecture is due to the bleak economic landscape our country faces. The corporations are prioritizing quantity over quality, which seems to be economically rational. This appears to be a diminishing sense of pride and foresight for long-term development for the American People.

America grapples with substantial debt burdens and deteriorating infrastructure, the value placed on preserving heritage and high quality development has significantly weakened.

Factor this data. I believe it cost roughly 4 Trillion to build out the entire Dubai. America is 35 Trillion in Debt and running a deficit of 1.8Trillion.
American Taxpayers should be living in Gold houses and driving on Gold streets.
 
Johnnyrocket891 said:
This is the truth-

The ongoing trend of corporate development transformation in historical areas and architecture is due to the bleak economic landscape our country faces. The corporations are prioritizing quantity over quality, which seems to be economically rational. This appears to be a diminishing sense of pride and foresight for long-term development for the American People.

America grapples with substantial debt burdens and deteriorating infrastructure, the value placed on preserving heritage and high quality development has significantly weakened.

Factor this data. I believe it cost roughly 4 Trillion to build out the entire Dubai. America is 35 Trillion in Debt and running a deficit of 1.8Trillion.
American Taxpayers should be living in Gold houses and driving on Gold streets.
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Yawn
 
"Make Boston Dubai for the sake of aesthetics" is...a take for sure. Boston's historic preservation is good, and a small skip north of this site (not to mention a block away throughout all of Copley) is proof positive that we do indeed preserve things that are important. Unfortunately a post-war big box B- retailer didn't make the cut.
 
Here's all I know: went in there last weekend with the kid. It has a 4-sided two-story climbing wall, batting cage, golf simulator, and a lot of cool stuff. Supposedly it is one of 12 flagships they have around the U.S., differentiated from their base suburban store. Yes, it is garbage architecture, but the kid had fun. I wish it were a 50-story residential tower with a store at the bottom, but, quite honestly, this is a placeholder that could become that in the future. At least they didn't build a billon-dollar 14-story mega lab, which likely would have precluded a residential development here. In the mean time, I'll take a relatively vibrant experiential store over a dead and vacant department store or amazon distribution warehouse in this same footprint while we await the next era.
 
bigpicture7 said:
It has a 4-sided two-story climbing wall, batting cage, golf simulator, and a lot of cool stuff.
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Oh cool. I haven't been in yet, but you can see the climbing wall from the street, which is fun to watch as you go by. That's one nice architectural detail, I guess. And all those extras seem specifically designed to make in-person shopping at least more interesting that just ordering stuff online. Hope it works.

I'm with you all that I wish this was redeveloped into taller housing and maybe better ground floor retail. Given that they were just rehabing an existing suburban-style shopping center, this seems... fine. FWIW, here's a pic of the Lord and Taylor from 1974. This specific site has been the same, squat building for at least 50 years. A lot has been filled in around it (just look at that surface parking!). Hopefully this site's days are numbered and something better comes along.
www.digitalcommonwealth.org

Aerial view of Back Bay

An online library of photographs, manuscripts, audio recordings, and other materials of historical interest from libraries, museums, archives, and historical societies across Massachusetts.
www.digitalcommonwealth.org www.digitalcommonwealth.org

1714054757331.jpeg
 
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