L Street Station Redevelopment (née Old Edison Plant)| 776 Summer Street | South Boston

Re: Old Boston Edison plant on Summer St

Massport is expanding Conley Terminal, moving the haul road off East first, installing a new customs building, and installing a buffer park between East First and the new haul road.
 
Re: Old Boston Edison plant on Summer St

Last generator lifted out of New Boston Generating Station. 120 years of electricity generation on L Street, South Boston, comes to a close.
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Hopefully we see plans for this soon.
 
Re: Old Boston Edison plant on Summer St

It's old and ugly but the stack height and unusual color makes it one of the better landmarks in that area. I hope they build something tall and notable, not a 6 story apartment block.
 
Re: Old Boston Edison plant on Summer St

That thing is almost TWICE as old as me!!! Good gosh!!! :eek:
 
Re: Old Boston Edison plant on Summer St

At the moment Redgate is planning on razing everything but the the turbine rooms in the middle of the complex. The original Boston Electric Light Plant, the boiler rooms, along Summer St. with their unique segmental arch windows capped with lunets & the switch house are all slated for demolition. The turbine rooms which have been rechristened "Turbine Hall" only have architectural details on the ends, the long west side was always part of the boiler rooms and the long east side was incorporated into the original switch house.

They started off talking a lot about historic preservation, but it doesn't look like they want to save very much.

Once the massive 1965 New Boston section comes down much could be done incorporating the surviving boiler room exterior wall sections of the older plant.

A question: the last stack of the old plant is a massive yellow brick monster, someone from Redgate told me it doesn't go down to the ground, it's supported on a steel framework below the roof line. That doesn't seem possible. Is it possible?

Merrimac
 
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Wow, looks pretty good. 2.1 million square feet is a lot. Going to need to increase bus frequencies...
 
Buyer beware having any exposed natural wood on the exterior facade of a building. Huge maintenance costs .... or ... it will look like trash in 3 years. Maybe they will use trex.

cca
 
Utterly insipid. Must we build the same building over and over again? Redgate sold themselves to the neighborhood as a group with a history of successfully rehabbing and re-purposing industrial structures, but here they plan to demolish nearly all the structures that made up the three plants on the site. (the article on curbed erroneously refers to the whole site as the New Boston Generating plant, which was the newest plant that straddles the old Summer St. Generating Plant, also refereed to as Station No. 4).

The remaining walls of the boiler rooms and the older Boston Electric Light plant should be saved. they are historic gems. Since the "boiler house" was essentially a large hollow void and just two partial walls remain it seems they offer an opportunity for something dramatic and original. This plan saves only a tiny fraction of the existing historic and beautiful structures on the site.

These new structures are boring and completely out of character for the surrounding neighborhood. At the community meetings the consensus was for brick faced building of traditional design.

Here is an old Polaroid shot of one of the windows along Summer St. This wall has been the face of the plant for decades.

edison_aug24_12-02 by JFB119, on Flickr
 
Merrimac said:
These new structures are boring and completely out of character for the surrounding neighborhood. At the community meetings the consensus was for brick faced building of traditional design.
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Since I am unfamilar with this character of the surrounding neighborhood, what's the surrounding area/neighborhood like? Single family homes? Retail with brick fronts?
 
atlantaden, not counting the newest condo construction, the neighborhood is mostly wood frame triple-deckers with some brick and concrete warehouse adjacent. They showed the neighborhood lots of images of rehabbed 19th century mills and factories as an idea of what they would put in there.

The developers said they didn't want to repeat the mistakes of the South Boston Waterfront and the community was pretty much united in a rejection of steel and glass.
 
Merrimac said:
edison_aug24_12-02 by JFB119, on Flickr
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What do you propose as a use for a building with one big window and whole lot of brick? It certainly won't be homes. Or offices. Or retail. Seriously, what would you propose?

It is hard to re-purpose industrial buildings into anything relevant today. Everyone wants to preserve cool architecture, but being cool doesn't pay the rent in a city starved for housing. I'm sure the architects took a crack at is, but there is no guarantee of success when trying to jam a square peg into a round hole.

Sure, the Tate Modern works fine as a museum. It is one of the few uses that works well with limited fenestration. You propose a museum for this site and you'll get laughed out of the room. Theater maybe? Still a stretch and far, far from the highest and best use of this land.
 
fattony said:
What do you propose as a use for a building with one big window and whole lot of brick? It certainly won't be homes. Or offices. Or retail. Seriously, what would you propose?

It is hard to re-purpose industrial buildings into anything relevant today. Everyone wants to preserve cool architecture, but being cool doesn't pay the rent in a city starved for housing. I'm sure the architects took a crack at is, but there is no guarantee of success when trying to jam a square peg into a round hole.

Sure, the Tate Modern works fine as a museum. It is one of the few uses that works well with limited fenestration. You propose a museum for this site and you'll get laughed out of the room. Theater maybe? Still a stretch and far, far from the highest and best use of this land.
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It's not that hard to re purpose these buildings, add some windows, skylights, penthouse additions, etc. Put a little bit of effort in to it as promised.
 
JANAM said:
It's not that hard to re purpose these buildings, add some windows, skylights, penthouse additions, etc. Put a little bit of effort in to it as promised.
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By the time you've done all of that, it's lost whatever historic character it had. Honestly, this is a pretty forgettable building unless you have a sentimental attachment to it.
 
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