Josiah Quincy Upper School | 900 Washington Street | Chinatown

Arenacale said:
I know this building has its haters, but I think it's come out exceptionally well. I wish they could have somehow referenced the artwork along the top of the building it's replacing, the city is going to lose some color and personality if that goes away.
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This is the building it replaced, a temporary structure plus basketball courts:
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The artwork is on the Josiah Quincy Elementary School, next door (still there, the Upper School is not replacing the Elementary School):
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Mayor Wu, Superintendent Skipper Cut Ribbon on Josiah Quincy Upper School​

quincy school


“On September 12th, Mayor Michelle Wu joined Boston Public Schools Superintendent Mary Skipper, Treasurer and Receiver General Deb Goldberg, the City's Public Facilities Department, and Chinatown community members at the official ribbon cutting of the newly constructed Josiah Quincy Upper School, serving grades 6-12, in Chinatown. The new school facility, which opened in time for the 2024-2025 school year, includes a state-of-the-art media center, fitness center, band rooms, and other features to help each Josiah Quincy student reach their full potential and explore their individual educational interests…….”

https://www.bldup.com/posts/mayor-wu-superintendent-skipper-cut-ribbon-on-josiah-quincy-upper-school
 
Its awesome to see those last 2 empty parcels on the north side of the pike filled in. Pretty soon there wont be any empty lots left and then hopefully theyll move on to air rights next.
 
stick n move said:
Its awesome to see those last 2 empty parcels on the north side of the pike filled in. Pretty soon there wont be any empty lots left and then hopefully theyll move on to air rights next.
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The negative of this is you lose all the terra firma parcels that could anchor air rights. It is much easier to build air rights projects if the towers can be anchored on solid land.

A bold strategy for these parcels would have moved Marginal and Herald Streets out to the center of the air rights as a boulevard; opening up small amounts of anchor land on either side. Now you have to provide access to all the new Marginal Street abutters. This means the air rights are pure air rights, no terra firma to work with.
 
Yea that definitely would have been nice especially with a greenway added as well. It would taken a whole lot of work but with back bay station undergoing renovations in the near future as well there was a world in which the southeast corridor park could have been connected to the rose kennedy greenway by creating a connection through/next to back bay station and then continuing on along the air rights parcels before linking up with the greenway in chinatown. It would have taken a longg time until it would have been completed but if they had designed a masterplan to follow and then as each parcel is built its built to that plan maybe it could have happened. Its very hard to get big thinking projects like that done though in the 21st century.
 
It's almost painful to think about something like this that will never happen, but yes, despite being a fairly large-scale project, there could have been ways to do it. Marginal/Herald are fairly low traffic overnight, and sections of the Pike air rights could have been decked in such a way to reopen the roads by morning. The replacement roads could have been built alongside the old ones, and then traffic moved to them fairly quickly once completed.

Until the JQUS and 321 Harrison across from it were finished, almost everything along Herald and Marginal from Harrison through Arlington (except maybe 100 Shawmut) were "negotiable" - parking lots, parking garages, or older single-story buildings prime for redevelopment. You could have created a wonderful new Comm Ave Mall style median, replaced the roads over the Pike, and created a large buffer zone for new affordable housing development alongside Mass Pike Towers and Castle Square, created a bigger footprint for expansion of both schools, and opened up new terra firma parcels near Ink Block and Chinatown. Instead we got unused office->lab space over a parking garage and a tall wedge-shaped school.
 
MjolnirMan said:
It's almost painful to think about something like this that will never happen, but yes, despite being a fairly large-scale project, there could have been ways to do it. Marginal/Herald are fairly low traffic overnight, and sections of the Pike air rights could have been decked in such a way to reopen the roads by morning. The replacement roads could have been built alongside the old ones, and then traffic moved to them fairly quickly once completed.

Until the JQUS and 321 Harrison across from it were finished, almost everything along Herald and Marginal from Harrison through Arlington (except maybe 100 Shawmut) were "negotiable" - parking lots, parking garages, or older single-story buildings prime for redevelopment. You could have created a wonderful new Comm Ave Mall style median, replaced the roads over the Pike, and created a large buffer zone for new affordable housing development alongside Mass Pike Towers and Castle Square, created a bigger footprint for expansion of both schools, and opened up new terra firma parcels near Ink Block and Chinatown. Instead we got unused office->lab space over a parking garage and a tall wedge-shaped school.
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+1. You and Stick bring up a great idea that truly could have transformed.

It's a shame that I keep learning all these great options here on ArchBoston, yet within a couple of miles of all this there are several THOUSAND supposedly well-connected top-flight academics who do great research and publish really neat papers, yet seemingly don't really affect anything concrete in terms of actual change in their own environ:

-MIT Department of Urban Studies (ok, Kairos Shen - -but is anyone optimistic about the fighter against "Iconic buildings"?)
-BU Department of City Planning and Urban Affairs
-BC Corcoran center for Real estate and Urban Action
-Northeastern University School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs
-Tufts Department of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning
-Harvard University Department of Urban Planning and Design
-UMass Boston Department of Urban Planning and Community Development
-Wentworth Institute of Technology School of Architecture and Design
***not to mention the 728 students and 15 fulltime professors at the Boston Architectural College

Why don't these thousands of experts within a 3 mile circumference have ANY local sway or program to effect things I only hear about on this forum??????? They seem "Ivory Tower Useless" to me. What a different world this could be if they actually developed a voice and could affect things in their own neighborhood.
 
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shmessy said:
+1. You and Stick bring up a great idea that truly could have transformed.

It's a shame that I keep learning all these great options here on ArchBoston, yet within a couple of miles of all this there are several THOUSAND supposedly well-connected top-flight academics who do great research and publish really neat papers, yet seemingly don't really affect anything concrete in terms of actual change in their own environ:

-MIT Department of Urban Studies (ok, Kairos Shen - -but is anyone optimistic about the fighter against "Iconic buildings"?)
-BU Department of City Planning and Urban Affairs
-BC Corcoran center for Real estate and Urban Action
-Northeastern University School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs
-Tufts Department of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning
-Harvard University Department of Urban Planning and Design
-UMass Boston Department of Urban Planning and Community Development
-Wentworth Institute of Technology School of Architecture and Design
***not to mention the 728 students and 15 fulltime professors at the Boston Architectural College

Why don't these thousands of experts within a 3 mile circumference have ANY local sway or program to effect things I only hear about on this forum??????? They seem "Ivory Tower Useless" to me. What a different world this could be if they actually developed a voice and could affect things in their own neighborhood.
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Yea it is pretty weird how little quality and transformational ideas you get from all of those institutions.

We had an entire thread hashing this out with some pretty great work done in it. Unfortunately its so old all of the drawings have disappeared due to photobucket going away and the new site. All that is left is these 2 drawings from Davem on moving the roads to the center of the air rights parcels, plus some models from Shepard more along the lines of building on terrafirma that was talked about. Pretty good still, but sucks that almost everything else is gone. Pretty crazy that this was all the way back in 2013.
 
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shmessy said:
+1. You and Stick bring up a great idea that truly could have transformed.

It's a shame that I keep learning all these great options here on ArchBoston, yet within a couple of miles of all this there are several THOUSAND supposedly well-connected top-flight academics who do great research and publish really neat papers, yet seemingly don't really affect anything concrete in terms of actual change in their own environ:

-MIT Department of Urban Studies (ok, Kairos Shen - -but is anyone optimistic about the fighter against "Iconic buildings"?)
-BU Department of City Planning and Urban Affairs
-BC Corcoran center for Real estate and Urban Action
-Northeastern University School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs
-Tufts Department of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning
-Harvard University Department of Urban Planning and Design
-UMass Boston Department of Urban Planning and Community Development
-Wentworth Institute of Technology School of Architecture and Design
***not to mention the 728 students and 15 fulltime professors at the Boston Architectural College

Why don't these thousands of experts within a 3 mile circumference have ANY local sway or program to effect things I only hear about on this forum??????? They seem "Ivory Tower Useless" to me. What a different world this could be if they actually developed a voice and could affect things in their own neighborhood.
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I totally agree with your feelings, but it all comes down to money and politics. I've seen a thousand planning documents with GREAT ideas basically sit on the shelf because there is no money to implement them. Plus, developers have to secure the land in question plus make a least some profit. I was recently reading the "Turnpike Vision Document" from back in the Menino Days in 2000. Very little has been built that actually mirrors that document. The Lyrik Development at Mass Avenue and the Fenway Development over the Pike are VASTLY different than what was proposed or recommended in that visioning plan for the Pike in 2000. I'm not saying that's a bad thing. I think both of those developments are turning out really nice, but my point is that all the fantastic ideas from people are hard to implement in the real world of business and money. It takes a LOT to make complicated projects reach reality.
 
Java King said:
I totally agree with your feelings, but it all comes down to money and politics. I've seen a thousand planning documents with GREAT ideas basically sit on the shelf because there is no money to implement them. Plus, developers have to secure the land in question plus make a least some profit. I was recently reading the "Turnpike Vision Document" from back in the Menino Days in 2000. Very little has been built that actually mirrors that document. The Lyrik Development at Mass Avenue and the Fenway Development over the Pike are VASTLY different than what was proposed or recommended in that visioning plan for the Pike in 2000. I'm not saying that's a bad thing. I think both of those developments are turning out really nice, but my point is that all the fantastic ideas from people are hard to implement in the real world of business and money. It takes a LOT to make complicated projects reach reality.
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+1. But those final two sentences should resonate with those fantastically smart and talented people that their all their brilliant work isn't really translating into reality.

They may as well be gamers. Steve Samuels has left many times more of a legacy than any of those world class experts at any of those institutions. Are they content with their life's works?

I don't say this with disdain, but with sadness. Are we here on earth to make fantasies or to do good works? Does our work mean anything? Here's to Shen coming out of MIT this time and trying to do something more lasting than blocking "Iconic" architecture.
 
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