Hall of Shame Nominees

Status
Not open for further replies.
George_Apley

George_Apley

Not a Brahmin
Staff member
Joined
Jan 22, 2012
Messages
5,078
Reaction score
1,656
Members are encouraged to nominate an existing building, park or other piece of infrastructure in the Boston area that they believe diminishes the urban or built environment. Nominate features that have attributes that, in your opinion, should not be replicated and should serve as a model for what not to do in future projects.

There will be three new inductees in 2019.
 
Last edited:
Previous Inductees

2012
Winthrop Square Garage [DING DONG THE WITCH IS DEAD]
McCarthy Overpass
Former HoJo's in Kenmore Square

2011
Symphony Towers
Storrow Drive
South Bay Center

2010
Bowker Overpass (Charlesgate)
South Bay Interchange
Harbor Garage

2009
Boston City Hall Plaza
Midtown Motel
Tremont on the Common

2008
Tip O'Neill Building
Congress Street Garage
Methunion Manor
 
Cambridgepark Drive. All of it.
1589299496047.png
 
my two perennial nominees from way back when:

Mass Eye and Ear - for its dead streetscape and appearance of eating a much more sucessfull building
1200px-Mass-Eye-and-Ear.jpg


Harbor Towers - For not just the fenced off pool creating a barrier to the harbor walk but largely for the obstruction it's residence perform.
Harbor_Towers.jpg
 
Lol, it's like they put a couple of double-wides on top.
 
Bananarama said:
862 Beacon St

View attachment 5213

I don't know the story behind it, but there must've been some heavy corruption going on to get that thing put up...
Click to expand...

Fenway Park views (or used-to Fenway Park views before newer construction started crowding it out)? It's facing the right direction, and looks very much the part of those farcial Wrigleyville residential overbuilds the Chicago Cubs have been at war with for close to a century for making game-day money off them they can't touch.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
Fenway Park views (or used-to Fenway Park views before newer construction started crowding it out)? It's facing the right direction, and looks very much the part of those farcial Wrigleyville residential overbuilds the Chicago Cubs have been at war with for close to a century for making game-day money off them they can't touch.
Click to expand...
I suppose that's possible. But it's still way too far away and too low to see anything in the park itself.
Looking up those Wrigleyville overbuilds now and that's hilarious! Love seeing how neighbors capitalize on their location in funny ways. They're like literal extensions of the grandstands outside the park.
 
Bananarama said:
I suppose that's possible. But it's still way too far away and too low to see anything in the park itself.
Looking up those Wrigleyville overbuilds now and that's hilarious! Love seeing how neighbors capitalize on their location in funny ways. They're like literal extensions of the grandstands outside the park.
Click to expand...

Maybe the views were slightly better before the .406 Club was constructed. Those are old overbuilds...via Historic Aerials they appeared somewhere between the 1971 and 1978 views. .406 Club wasn't built until '87-88, so line-of-sight viewing might've been a smidge less compromised back in the day.

Let's face it...it literally is corrugated aluminum porta-trailers hoisted onto the roof in the hackiest hack that ever tried to hack. The roof probably leaks like a sonofabitch at whatever outsized rent it's charging to 5 sardine-packed students who drink themselves into oblivion on the porches. With how ghetto-fabulous the execution is I can totally buy this as an unsuccessful ad hoc 'attempt' to template the Wrigleyville overhangs around intrinsically shit obstructed views that probably at their historical best never gave you much better than binocular views of what the right fielder was doing. Don't necessarily need to assume much thought was put behind it at the time, because it was during such a depressed rental era that even a poorly-thought gimmick done cheap enough might have been seen by the early-70's building owners as worth a shot. As it turned out, the whole contraption simply reeks of being poorly thought-out.

It's going to be one expensive-ass gut-n'-rebuild when it all has to come down. Those buttesses can't have too many more years of decent load-bearing capacity left in them, and after certain amount of metal decay there's no more patching to do on the roof units before they simply have to be torn out. At least the default appearance of the buildings (based on the '71 pre-overhang rooflines) was identical to the much statelier brownstones next door. I'm guessing the ugly-ass concrete brutalist cladding on the bottom 2 floors dates to same early-70's era as the overhang. That too can go straight to hell if removing it re-exposes the original brick.
 
The whole trailer on top of an otherwise nice building reminds me of this quote from some old tv show "You're better off living in the hole, looking at the palace, than living at the palace and looking at the hole." I guess what I'm trying to say, is that despite it being a giant 🖕 to the neighborhood, that's a nice deck with a great view. Cant see how ugly the building is when your chilling on that sweet deck.
 
kmp1284 said:
Still is. I was curious myself and looked it up in the Registry of Deeds’ database.
Click to expand...
Can also confirm that's a BU property. I've actually been up there, albeit over a decade ago about this point, when a friend of mine lived there for a semester.

On a related note, while those balconies may have originally been a selling point, BU does not allow students on them. Which is why no mater how far back you in Streetview you'll find the balconies suspiciously empty of any furniture/bikes/other possessions that you might otherwise expect. That's a university-wide policy, so I doubt it says anything one way or the other about the structural integrity of the balconies.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Back
Top