Our Lady of Good Voyage | Seaport Sq Parcel H | 55 - 57 Seaport Blvd | Seaport

A smidge off topic but the watermark ground level on seaport blvd came out very classy, yotel will be cool with the blue accents and ground floor retail/roof top bar, the office part of the church kind of looks like watermark so more quality brick at ground level, and then we get a church tucked in there. Gonna be fun to walk down this street especially how it goes from this to the huge glass lobby of 121 seaport with the pedestrian portal in the middle, 101 seaport ground level more glass, then the absolute gem of parcel M. Then you get seaport square across the street which will be next level, and then you can even round the corner to pier 4 and get its gets even better.

The seaport is coming together masterfullly. Once all of these are built and people start to move in a supermarket, library, and school wont be far behind. So many articles on Boston.com and the Globe bash on the seaport but its like 1/4th done and just based off what is rendered so far its going to be a great neighborhood.

Iv said it before a few times, but the north end, fanuel hall, quincy market, newbury st, boylston....aren't going anywhere. We will still have those to go to but now on top of that we will have a modern district on the waterfront. Variety is great, and there is no reason to build another north end here when we already have one and its amazing. Someone else also mentioned all these bars going on the harborwalk is going to make one hell of a bar crawl scene here. Im very excited.
 
I want to encourage your positivist and I agree on almost everything you said especially that the older places we love are still there to experience if you need them. That is a nice approach.

I have to say though ...
stick n move said:
The seaport is coming together masterfullly. .
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is perhaps a bit of an overstatement. It could be much better if not watered down by near religious commitment to R.O.I. and a lack of urban planning vision that goes beyond getting it done as quickly as possible.

I think it is good to have this wasteland activated and am happy with where it is going ... I simply wish it could have been different.

cca
 
For me, the problem with the Seaport is that nobody took responsibility for transportation/mobility, which is a key civic/place function.

The OLGV church, as a good example of "interesting street-facing retail" (with no parking, interesting textures, and a pedestrian plaza, backed up with boutique buildings similar to the way Rockefellar Center's national pavillions, Britain, France, Italy, International face St. Patrick's across 5th Ave) *is* and example of stuff that went right, but it is hard to credit the planners

Its the traffic, transport, and civic services (library? school? police kiosk?) that the private sector was not asked to provide or chip in for that's missing. Had not the church occupied a key parcel, they wouldn't be there either

So while, taken singly, most new "ROI" buildings were done right, they were never asked to have a "civic moment" to them. That's sad. OLGV kinda calls attention to how such stuff is appreciated but how it never got cooked in.

.
 
Arlington said:
For me, the problem with the Seaport is that nobody took responsibility for transportation/mobility, which is a key civic/place function.

The OLGV church, as a good example of "interesting street-facing retail" (with no parking, interesting textures, and a pedestrian plaza, backed up with boutique buildings similar to the way Rockefellar Center's national pavillions, Britain, France, Italy, International face St. Patrick's across 5th Ave) *is* and example of stuff that went right, but it is hard to credit the planners

Its the traffic, transport, and civic services (library? school? police kiosk?) that the private sector was not asked to provide or chip in for that's missing. Had not the church occupied a key parcel, they wouldn't be there either

So while, taken singly, most new "ROI" buildings were done right, they were never asked to have a "civic moment" to them. That's sad. OLGV kinda calls attention to how such stuff is appreciated but how it never got cooked in.

.
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Nicely said.
 
Arlington said:
For me, the problem with the Seaport is that nobody took responsibility for transportation/mobility, which is a key civic/place function.

The OLGV church, as a good example of "interesting street-facing retail" (with no parking, interesting textures, and a pedestrian plaza, backed up with boutique buildings similar to the way Rockefellar Center's national pavillions, Britain, France, Italy, International face St. Patrick's across 5th Ave) *is* and example of stuff that went right, but it is hard to credit the planners

Its the traffic, transport, and civic services (library? school? police kiosk?) that the private sector was not asked to provide or chip in for that's missing. Had not the church occupied a key parcel, they wouldn't be there either

So while, taken singly, most new "ROI" buildings were done right, they were never asked to have a "civic moment" to them. That's sad. OLGV kinda calls attention to how such stuff is appreciated but how it never got cooked in.

.
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I definitely agree, I kind of just keep it in my head that the rest of Boston wasn't planned ahead of time for the most part and over time these things fill in organically. Gonna take a looooong time but eventually I feel like all of this will be addressed, the main point being transportation- hopefully sooner than later.

I kind of feel like once people start moving in (very rich people) they'll call for a grocery store, then a school, then with that they'll need a library, and then all of these people will clog the streets and need better transportation. They're rich and some important people will live here so Im hopeful their calls wont fall on deaf ears. Gonna be a while but I feel like all this will come to fruition once it starts becoming a "real neighborhood" where many people live, work, and play.
 
Walking around the Seaport last night, I concluded that the chapel is a very welcome human-scale building, along with District Hall and the Barking Crab.

Lots of potential in the Seaport, but right now "after hours" (8pm - 10pm) Seaport Blvd is an over-wide, positively exurban drag strip.

The other thing I noticed was that OLGV's brick is a thin "roman brick" style and very carefully/tastefully articulated.

It almost looks like the new windows on the OLGV chapel are the same width (but double height) as the ones on the existing chapel (which was lonely but still functional). Any word on whether they'll re-use the existing windows? (in pictures I seem to remember unremarkable midcentury modernist /figurative stuff). If the windows are worth re-using it might work to have a new donor pay for doubling the size of each window. It isn't unusual when re-hanging stained glass change dimensions (such as converting a roman arch top to a gothic one or vice versa). In this case it is all rectangles.
 
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This neighborhood needs more cultural developments like this. Not necessarily another church, but something other than a glass apartment or office building.
 
^ I hope the "Transportation Center" gets something (arcade? Plaza?) that helps it be a worthy third place (not office or apt) and not just a tarted up garage.
 
mdd said:
This neighborhood needs more cultural developments like this. Not necessarily another church, but something other than a glass apartment or office building.
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... because the Children's Museum, Boston Fire Museum, ICA, District Hall, new Society For Arts & Crafts outpost, BSA space, and Tea Party Museum--all within a 2-block radius no less--are hardly enough cultural offerings...

Thanks for the photos, BeeLine. The church is a nice addition. I wonder if a synagogue could be thrown in the mix, too.
 
dshoost88 said:
... because the Children's Museum, Boston Fire Museum, ICA, District Hall, new Society For Arts & Crafts outpost, BSA space, and Tea Party Museum--all within a 2-block radius no less--are hardly enough cultural offerings...

Thanks for the photos, BeeLine. The church is a nice addition. I wonder if a synagogue could be thrown in the mix, too.
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Synagogues don't get built by a central authority... there's a long way to go before a Jewish community in the Seaport wants a building. Frankly, it would be better to support the existing Downtown synagogues than to found a new one, since they're both hard up for young members.
 
Equilibria said:
Synagogues don't get built by a central authority... there's a long way to go before a Jewish community in the Seaport wants a building. Frankly, it would be better to support the existing Downtown synagogues than to found a new one, since they're both hard up for young members.
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I'm sure CJP can pony up the cash for several synagogues in the Seaport district, but I don't think there's enough critical mass to justify them.
 
No one is building new churches these days -- typically they are closing and being sold for development

You have to remember that this was a special case -- the reason there is a Catholic Church being built is that there was an existing Catholic Church in the old South Boston Seaport area -- left over from when there were a lot of Catholic Longshoreman and an occasional seafarer.

The old church was located on a prime piece of land that was desired for development -- in essence this was just a "virtual move" of the existing church
 
stick n move said:
I definitely agree, I kind of just keep it in my head that the rest of Boston wasn't planned ahead of time for the most part and over time these things fill in organically. Gonna take a looooong time but eventually I feel like all of this will be addressed, the main point being transportation- hopefully sooner than later.

I kind of feel like once people start moving in (very rich people) they'll call for a grocery store, then a school, then with that they'll need a library, and then all of these people will clog the streets and need better transportation. They're rich and some important people will live here so Im hopeful their calls wont fall on deaf ears. Gonna be a while but I feel like all this will come to fruition once it starts becoming a "real neighborhood" where many people live, work, and play.
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Stick -- I think that the Seaport / Innovation District is actually fairly far along in developing into a special kind of neighborhood -- a kind of hybrid between an employment center and a residential district

The only two similar scale development situations in the core of Boston was the Filling of the Back Bay and the reconstruction after the Great Fire

However each was unique and only provides some small bits of insight into what we can expect for the development of the Seaport / Innovation District. Kendall Square in Cambridge might be the best model, but it too is in an active state of development and hence hard to use for guidance.

In the case of the reconstruction after the Great Fire the streets were still there and many of the businesses wanted to quickly rebuild. Because the district had already become heavily commercialized there were few resident in the district burned by the fire. As a result, essentially what got built was a taller and more modern version of what had burned.

In the case of the filling of the Back Bay -- it was planned as an essentially exclusive residential district with provisions for churches and schools and the rest were big single family houses. All of the commercial development of the Back Bay came later as single family residences became shops on the ground floor with offices and residences above.

Another major difference was that the filling of the Back Bay was very methodical and almost episodic -- blocks were filled, lots sold for development and then the proceeds paid for filling the next couple of blocks. Today's Back Bay with its beloved diverse, eclectic mix of office towers, retail, rental residences, hotels, and condos, with a few single families, took more than a century to evolve.

In the case of the Seaport / Innovation District -- There has been extraordinary progress in building it the from scratch in the past 20 years. First came a few pioneers -- much like the people who moved into the Arlington St. Blocks of the Back Bay. Their equivalent would be Drew's Seaport Hotel and Office Towers and the Court House. The next few Back Bay blocks west were fairly unremarkable.

Dartmouth St and its intersection with Boylston and Huntington Ave at Copley Sq essentially created what we think of the Back Bay. Today, we are finishing up the equivalent of the Berkeley and Clarendon blocks in the Seaport. In someways Seaport Square may be the equivalent of Copley Square. We will have to watch and see how it develops.

In addition, the Seaport / Innovation district is now beginning to extend away from the harbor into the old Industrial / Warehouse area and this is bound to accelerate with GE's move.

Come back in about 10 years and we'll have a reasonable chance to see if it has successfully become a neighborhood blending work and living with visitors and play.
 
Scaffolding is down on the front/ Sleeper St side. Great brick work as mentioned above. This church feels like it is completely DWARFED by it neighbors and the impending street wall assembling around it on Seaport Blvd.

Only thought for an improvement: some soft of steeple - traditional or a modern interpretation to more gracefully draw the eye upwards to the surrounding street wall taking shape.
 
Only thought for an improvement: some sort of steeple - traditional or a modern interpretation to more gracefully draw the eye upwards to the surrounding street wall taking shape.
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The tower is getting a cross on it. Hopefully that helps a little.
 
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