Four Seasons Tower @ CSC | 1 Dalton Street | Back Bay

bbfen said:
kz, thanks for the pics and welcome back. Been a while since I’ve seen your terrific photography.
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Thank ya. Although I live in NYC, my girlfriend lives up in the Lexington area and I decamped to her place about a month ago. She has a car and the weather's gotten nice out, so out I go ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 
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Never noticed that row house presumably wedged between a couple office buildings here. Was this built that way on purpose or all that is remaining of many?
 
DZH22 said:
Due to its out of the way location, probably 99% of people who see this tower will never see its base. With a building this tall and this visible, I would put the tower's aesthetics well above whether it has a diner or 1st floor windows. This is now the city's 3rd most visible building, and will be featured in sports telecasts, commercials, postcards... Basically, in the world's window-side view of Boston, this building will be noticed.

A similar, but even (way) worse case, is the Federal Reserve. It's distinct and screams "Boston!" even though the base is an unforgiving fortress. It's highly featured in movies like The Departed. 1 Dalton will also be highly featured in due time.

Having proper street activation at, say, the cancelled tower site on the corner of Mass Ave and Boylston Street is much more important than this location will ever be. Not every nook and cranny of the city needs street level activation.
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It's not an "out of the way" location.

It is quite close to the Christian Science Center plaza, the Pru (especially the area where tourists board the Duckboats), etc.

It is quite central.

It only seems "out of the way" because it and the buildings around it treat pedestrians as if each one had dynamite strapped on. No one is asking for it to be Downtown Crossing but thousands of people walk that sidewalk every day - - it wouldn't be a bad thing for this city to be more inviting for human beings.
 
shmessy said:
it wouldn't be a bad thing for this city to be more inviting for human beings.
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i get, and largely agree with, your observations about the street-level experience around this building and its neighbors, but the above comment is a real head-scratcher. aside from the vast number of polls and studies that consistently peg boston as one of (if not *the*) most walkable cities in america, a simple stroll in literally any part of the area is enough to reinforce that one of boston's greatest strengths is that it is *exceptionally* "inviting for human beings." this one, very small section? yes, not a great pedestrian experience. but that's the exception to the larger rule here.
 
chrisbrat said:
i get, and largely agree with, your observations about the street-level experience around this building and its neighbors, but the above comment is a real head-scratcher. aside from the vast number of polls and studies that consistently peg boston as one of (if not *the*) most walkable cities in america, a simple stroll in literally any part of the area is enough to reinforce that one of boston's greatest strengths is that it is *exceptionally* "inviting for human beings." this one, very small section? yes, not a great pedestrian experience. but that's the exception to the larger rule here.
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Chris, the sidewalks and the compactness of the city is what earns it that well-derserved moniker. However, the lack of inviting outlets to get OFF the sidewalk in MANY parts of the city holds it back from being a place where millions can live. Corner diners/coffee shops would go a very long way. It will always be a third-tier American city until it can be more livable at least 18 hours per day for humans who like t be out and about. This particular location is smack dab in an area of the city that does indeed have busy foot traffic. This building has no excuse for the solid walls on at least two of its sides.

It isn't a Chicken or Egg conundrum. It's very easy. People walk Newbury Street or Boylston Street in large numbers because of the great ground floor amenities and lack of fortress buildings. If you build it, they will come.

And yes, Meddlepal ia right on. The bar is extremely low for American cities in this regard.
 
I do kind of agree that Boston is actually overrated as far as street life. I constantly hear how walkable it is and how it has such a major stock of brownstones/townhouses and I always think this is such a tourist perspective. People who think this clearly only stayed in the back bay newbury/boylston area and never ventured out to Dorchester Roxbury etc.

Dorchester is the largest neighborhood in Boston so its actually a much bigger representative of how avg Bostonians live than these touristy areas. Millions of crappy triple deckers is what my Boston experience is, wayyyy more than quaint brick townhouses. I wish the grid and architecture of the south end had carried on throughout the outer neighborhoods but they just didnt. The majority of Boston is actually separate non connected wood buildings on a suburban layout in what is a pretty poor urban experience.
 
shmessy said:
I can't agree with that at all.. The 'excitement' for a few of on this website is the Skyline impact. The excitement for actual HUMANOIDS would be at the living human sidewalk level. Real cities don't look like post-Neutron bomb events.

That "dreary street" NEEDED a life injection. Hell, it is right around the corner from where all the tourists jump aboard the Duckboats - - - what a crap sandwich to serve out of towners. That will go nowhere for Boston's reputation.

A real city is about human life - - Boston needs street level windows and corner diners, pubs, etc...........
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In my opinion, you are confusing what should be (and I agree with you completely) with what actually is. This building, while fantastic from a skyline point of view failed on the street level. And I suspect it's because the building's customers don't care about that. It's a helicopter sky scraper, not something that creates a bustling neighborhood.
 
BMW said:
Never noticed that row house presumably wedged between a couple office buildings here. Was this built that way on purpose or all that is remaining of many?
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All that's remaining of many. Note the building on the corner is the same exact style. The earliest fire map showing development here is 1890 and it would appear one developer had a go at the whole block. Then once the area became more commercial the properties started getting redeveloped with those 1910s-20s offices.

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It's also worth saying that, despite the dense suburban layout of most of Boston's (and Cambridge, and Somerville, etc.) neighborhoods outside of the core, those neighborhoods are still very walkable and pedestrian friendly for the most part, and it's relatively easy to get to a commercial district on foot from most locations. The same cannot be said of many American cities.
 
George_Apley said:
It's also worth saying that, despite the dense suburban layout of most of Boston's (and Cambridge, and Somerville, etc.) neighborhoods outside of the core, those neighborhoods are still very walkable and pedestrian friendly for the most part, and it's relatively easy to get to a commercial district on foot from most locations. The same cannot be said of many American cities.
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Yep, exactly. I never drive anywhere in my neighborhood, despite it's far more suburban feel than one of the core areas. Worth noting, too, that even the "suburban" sections of Boston/Camberville are actually very housing dense compared even to core areas of most other US cities. Pretty much anywher in Boston with the exception of Readville and some parts of West Roxbury is above 10,000 people per square mile.
 
stoweker said:
i mean.... that's most major cities. if you get off the tourist track in chicago and go NW on the blue line up past Logan Circle it's the same thing, and the south side is disconnected buildings and vacant lots. NYC is similar once you get out of manhattan and go east through brooklyn and queens where it starts to become more dense suburban. i can't think of any american cities that aren't nice / walkable outside of the tourist urban core.

also generally when people think of cities they've been to they're thinking of the tourist areas they've visited, not the time they spent driving through dorchester / the bronx / chicago west side to get there...
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"......off the tourist track"? The main Duckboat passenger terminal is across the street!

The direct problem here, Stoweker, is that this building IS smack dab right in the tourist area. There are 6+ major hotels within 3 blocks of this. The Christian Science Reflecting Pool is at a 90 degree angle from this. The Pru Center is one of the major tourist spots in Boston (if not the very top one). The Christian Science Center isn't too far behind. This is directly between the two. It's near impossible to get any MORE "touristy" than this.

Folks, this isn't Hyde Park or Mattapan.

.
 
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I think you're misreading a lot of people. The conversation's moved past 1 Dalton to the success of Boston's urbanism/walkability in general. No one is disagreeing that 1 Dalton's base sucks. No one is saying that it's outside the tourist district.
 
Continue on the "how successful is Boston's urbanism" convo: here. I've copied the posts over. (if you don't like that, fight me.)

Carry on with bashing 1 Dalton's shitty base.
 
I don't know the exact restrictions that were imposed on One Dalton from the Christian Science Center, but I feel they were rather heavy enough to make it difficult to create an engaging street presence. If someone has the terms and can post them, it might be helpful for us to decide on if there was a significantly better alternative to what we got instead.
 
this provides a summary (it's not the actual deed), but basically: no bars, liquor stores, medical facilities, porn, or competing religious facilties on the lower floors. not being able to have a ground-floor bar/restaurant with booze really limits how inviting 1 dalton could have been made in that respect. one of the things most people like about 1 dalton is its slender proportions -- the actual footprint on the ground is pretty minimal. so, they could have a store 24 or a dunks on the ground-floor, but i think it's reasonable to concede that those types of establishments are kinda off-brand for the four seasons.
 
chrisbrat said:
this provides a summary (it's not the actual deed), but basically: no bars, liquor stores, medical facilities, porn, or competing religious facilties on the lower floors. not being able to have a ground-floor bar/restaurant with booze really limits how inviting 1 dalton could have been made in that respect. one of the things most people like about 1 dalton is its slender proportions -- the actual footprint on the ground is pretty minimal. so, they could have a store 24 or a dunks on the ground-floor, but i think it's reasonable to concede that those types of establishments are kinda off-brand for the four seasons.
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"No porn, religious or alcohol" doesn't eliminate all possibilities (except for folks like me and a few others here ;) ).

The physical footprint is not huge, but this sucker is 50+ stories - - there will be a lot of in-and-out foot traffic engendered by it. So it is a "taker, not a maker" when it comes to the urban fabric of the city.
 
stefal said:
I don't know the exact restrictions that were imposed on One Dalton from the Christian Science Center, but I feel they were rather heavy enough to make it difficult to create an engaging street presence. If someone has the terms and can post them, it might be helpful for us to decide on if there was a significantly better alternative to what we got instead.
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I don’t know what the restrictions dictate but even then there isn’t a lot of flexibility when you consider the requirements of the space - two distinct lobby areas along with some back of house space, the loading dock and the ramp to the garage. The design could have been less fortress-like but there really isn’t the space for additional programming.
 
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