Liberty Mutual Tower | 157 Berkeley Street | Back Bay

[BostonUrbEx]

Re: Liberty Mutual plans major Boston expansion

I think "beer garden" makes for a better drinking game on this forum than "football stadium in the Seaport" does.

DRINK!

 

[Meadowhawk]

Re: Liberty Mutual plans major Boston expansion

I find that damn billboard much more distracting than the gerbil tube! As skywalks go, it's almost invisible!

Agreed. If there has to be a sign there it should be a sleeker, less boxy LED sign. A rooftop restaurant there would work too.

 

[bdurden]

Re: Liberty Mutual plans major Boston expansion

Would not a rooftop beer garden instead of that damn billboard be so much more...Boston?

Boston hasn't made good use of it's rooftops, and despite our beer consumption we are not a biergarten city, so no, I don't think a rooftop beer garden would be so much more Boston.

 

[kz1000ps]

Re: Liberty Mutual plans major Boston expansion

Yesterday during all that nastiness:

 

[jass]

Re: Liberty Mutual plans major Boston expansion

I really hate the top.

In this picture, the building with the missing facade on the side, was there another building there?

 

[AmericanFolkLegend]

Re: Liberty Mutual plans major Boston expansion

In this picture, the building with the missing facade on the side, was there another building there?

The Pike is right in front of that building (the building Mistral is located in). My guess is that there either used to be a building there or that side faced rail road tracks till the pike went in.

 

[type001]

Re: Liberty Mutual plans major Boston expansion

^^^ That's actually where Columbus Center was supposed to go.

Thanks again Ned, you worthless sociopath!

 

[kz1000ps]

Re: Liberty Mutual plans major Boston expansion

The original railroad trench was about half as wide--it didn't cut as far to the north--which allowed space for one more building to front onto Columbus. But that road on the building-in-question's side has always been there; otherwise it would never have been built with all those wonderful arched windows.

I think the confusion stems from the rather insensitive paint job the non-decorated sides have gotten. Imagine those bricks minus the off-white...

And for those who didn't get the memo, historicaerials.com is a treasure trove of vintage footage of both the aerial and road map varieties, and any self-respecting (or is that self-loathing?) architecture nerd will get cozy with it ASAP!

 

[tmac9wr]

Re: Liberty Mutual plans major Boston expansion

For better or worse, it really does look like that building has been there for decades.

 

[kz1000ps]

Re: Liberty Mutual plans major Boston expansion

I really hate the top.

To this I agree, though I'm not sure I would go so far as to use the "h" word. But for all the blocky coarseness of the main facade, the top ends with quite a whimper. Really, the whole thing feels limp and lifeless.

Yet it's still better than 90% of what's going up. And the response from the folks at skyscraperpage, which I cite just because they aren't looking at Boston with such myopia, has been quite positive.

 

[tmac9wr]

Re: Liberty Mutual plans major Boston expansion

The top definitely isn't great. I feel it's one of the few examples of something bad actually looking better when you're closer to it. I think this is because of the perspective...when you're looking up you don't see just how big the gap is, whereas if you're looking at it from 3-4 blocks away you can see that there's legitimately 2 stories of precast.

 

[MBTAddict]

Re: Liberty Mutual plans major Boston expansion

How hard would it be to add a lighting element to this at some point? It almost looks like it was meant to have one.

 

[AmericanFolkLegend]

Re: Liberty Mutual plans major Boston expansion

...when you're looking up you don't see just how big the gap is, whereas if you're looking at it from 3-4 blocks away you can see that there's legitimately 2 stories of precast.

I thought we determined that it was not precast. But actual limestone inlaid in precast panels.

 

[tmac9wr]

Re: Liberty Mutual plans major Boston expansion

I thought we determined that it was not precast. But actual limestone inlaid in precast panels.

I think the construction around Boston has become so laden in precast that anything that isn't glass, I just refer to as precast haha....because yea the quality is definitely better than the other stuff going up around the city.

 

[AmericanFolkLegend]

Re: Liberty Mutual plans major Boston expansion

Haha! It's like saying "Kleenex" instead of "tissue".
Our children won't know the word "facade". They'll just say "precast".

 

[tmac9wr]

Re: Liberty Mutual plans major Boston expansion

haha yea very good call

 

[Downburst]

Re: Liberty Mutual plans major Boston expansion

How hard would it be to add a lighting element to this at some point? It almost looks like it was meant to have one.

According to this rendering, the building should have some sort of nighttime lighting:

Hopefully it didn't get VE'd out or anything.

 

[czsz]

Re: Liberty Mutual plans major Boston expansion

According to this rendering

This statement that can never precede anything truthful

 

[Lurker]

Re: Liberty Mutual plans major Boston expansion

I really hate the top.

In this picture, the building with the missing facade on the side, was there another building there?

That building was the headquarters for the Pope Manufacturing Company (bicycles). Several stories were added in the 1920s to stretch the building vertically.

 

[Arborway]

Re: Liberty Mutual plans major Boston expansion

Today, I saw this in person for the first time.

I love this building. The ground-floor is gonna suck, but everything else is top-notch.

I just don't get the hate for this one.