Former Grampy's Gas site | 290 Cambridge Street | Beacon Hill

Re: 290 Cambridge Street, Beacon Hill

The ground floor retail is what has me most excited, because I know that this area could use more activity at the street level.

I don't care if the building is boring above the ground floor because we need more "boring buildings" quite honestly. The city needs a steady diet of "boring buildings" that get the fundamentals correct -- to fill in all the gaps left by urban renewal and poor planning.
 
Re: 290 Cambridge Street, Beacon Hill

Matthew said:
The ground floor retail is what has me most excited, because I know that this area could use more activity at the street level.

I don't care if the building is boring above the ground floor because we need more "boring buildings" quite honestly. The city needs a steady diet of "boring buildings" that get the fundamentals correct -- to fill in all the gaps left by urban renewal and poor planning.
Click to expand...

OK, I know this design is in keeping with the neighborhood, but wouldn't a modern in-fill building more like 4-6 Newbury be much better than this snooze?
 
Re: 290 Cambridge Street, Beacon Hill

statler said:
I'm trying to see what you see. I know it's just a rendering but the scale and proportions don't look off to my (admittedly untrained) eye. What do you see that need to be reworked?
Click to expand...

Please understand that this is what I do on a day to day basis and am very sensitive to it ... so this might get a bit abstract.

Lets just take for example the cornice. This building is full of traditional imagery without the use of the proportional "rules" that come along with it. Traditional cornices has a formula of height, projection, and transitions based on the height of the building. Look at any diagram of the classical orders (Corinthian, Ionic, Doric, and Tuscan) and you can see these rules at work. The softening of these details makes the building seem under-cooked ... and edging towards (gasp) Post-Modernism.

I would be happy to have a longer conversation about this via private message. I do not want to write screeds of text on a discussion board.

cca
 
Re: 290 Cambridge Street, Beacon Hill

JeffDowntown said:
OK, I know this design is in keeping with the neighborhood, but wouldn't a modern in-fill building more like 4-6 Newbury be much better than this snooze?
Click to expand...

Eh. I don't know why it needs to be "better". If the materials suck then yeah, better would be better, but if this has solid materials, I don't care in the least if it's boring.
 
Re: 290 Cambridge Street, Beacon Hill

Matthew said:
The ground floor retail is what has me most excited, because I know that this area could use more activity at the street level.

I don't care if the building is boring above the ground floor because we need more "boring buildings" quite honestly. The city needs a steady diet of "boring buildings" that get the fundamentals correct -- to fill in all the gaps left by urban renewal and poor planning.
Click to expand...

Is that you Kairos Shen? No worries, this will never be mistaken for anything "iconic".
 
Re: 290 Cambridge Street, Beacon Hill

JeffDowntown said:
OK, I know this design is in keeping with the neighborhood, but wouldn't a modern in-fill building more like 4-6 Newbury be much better than this snooze?
Click to expand...

Yes it would. But the 19th century is so fetishized in Boston that even the most shallow of imitations is saluted. I can't imagine at all in 70 years or so this becoming a candidate for historic preservation unless it is regarded as a prime example of reactionary Beacon Hill contextualism of the 2010s.
 
Re: 290 Cambridge Street, Beacon Hill

I have read minutes of Somerville Design Review Committee meetings where they admonish architects to tone down or remove cornices altogether. On the one hand, I dislike the cornices that are cartoonishly overdone, but the complete lack of cornice makes buildings feel unfinished to me.

Stripping cornices from designs are just another step in reducing most buildings to the bare minimum of fine detailing. I wonder if this stripping down is driven primarily by the customer, the architect or the permitting authorities.
 
Re: 290 Cambridge Street, Beacon Hill

That old Quaker Oats ad is awesome.
 
Re: 290 Cambridge Street, Beacon Hill

Cambridge Street during its widening, in 1926.

211.jpg
 
Re: 290 Cambridge Street, Beacon Hill

I took pics of that last week forgot to post ,was suprised the steel was aleady up 5 floors :)
 
I think this will turn out nice. Not one cornice, but two, on a side elevation.
 
This is coming out NICE! Almost looks like it was always there and was just renovated. Don't care what all the naysayers think from the past couple pages, it came out alright in my book. The only give-away that this is all-new is the expansion joint between the third and fourth floors.
 
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