PBX Residences [Former N.E. Telephone Co. Bldg.] | 8 Harrison Ave. | Chinatown

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DBM

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I don't believe this project has a thread yet; it just got posted on UHub. Moderator, if you know this is a redundant thread, please delete.

If not: link to the BRA page is below. Given how gritty, sterile, and inhospitable the Essex St. corridor is from Washington St. through to the Radian apartment tower [aka former Dainty Dot], anything that occurs here is presumably a win...

http://www.bostonredevelopmentauthority.org/getattachment/24205358-5950-41e4-98e5-508c1f349643
 
They're also turning the huge building across the street that had a fabric store into residential , in the BRA photo what's the ugly brown building to the right?
 
Th "Harrison Ave Annex" attached to it is one of the ugliest buildings downtown. Pity it isn't being touched!
 
They recently completed re-pointing the brick exterior and replaced the "windows" along the ground floor. I'd say that work wrapped up within the last year or so. Does anyone know what was occupying the space prior to theses plans to convert the space into residential units?
 
BostonDrew said:
They recently completed re-pointing the brick exterior and replaced the "windows" along the ground floor. I'd say that work wrapped up within the last year or so. Does anyone know what was occupying the space prior to theses plans to convert the space into residential units?
Click to expand...

BostonDrew -- the original masonry building and the brick veneer-walled annex were and are a major switching hub for then NET now known as Verizon. The older building dates from the beginning of the Telephone Network Era [circa 1910] the annex is mid 60's [think Boston City Hall era]

What happened was as demand grew for multiple lines for major corporate customers the Telco's provided an automated Private Branch Exchange [PBX] service for the customer [e.g. Bank of Boston] with hundreds of lines being managed out of the Telco building. This growth led to the annex.

Today the technology has so shrunk that a whole building and an annex has been compacted into the lower floors with the upper floors of the original building unused.

Verizon has made the space available to the developer. -- with the novelty name PBX

Its a bit unfortunate that a slim glass tower couldn't have been sited atop the annex to make its presence less ugly and add a couple dozen additional apartments with a totally different flavor and they could call it Ip-PBX [for Voice over IP telephony Private Branch Exchange]
 
If I read the filing correctly, improved technology meant a reduction in equipment size and a reduction in space needs, freeing up space.
 
tobyjug said:
If I read the filing correctly, improved technology meant a reduction in equipment size and a reduction in space needs, freeing up space.
Click to expand...

Tobyjug -- Exactly -- the same happened at 185 Franklin [about 1/2 the building vacated], and Cambridge Street Telephone Buildings

In essence the racks and racks of specialized Telco switching hardware interconnected with and tray after tray of copper cables has been replaced by a very large computer responsible for making the connection [composed of many "blades" housed in still quite a few racks filled with "card cages" and some specialized I/O racks [where things come and go from the building fiber optic cables do the interconnects
o.jpg

These dense rack rooms then are supported by lots of power from multiple sources and lots of cooling
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roof.jpg

[the roof of Marley Group at One Summer St [aka the Jordan Marsh Building]
There has been a more than concomitant reduction in required staffing for the modern telecommunications exchange -- shrinking to essentially near zero inside staff -- these are "lights out" facilities. The computer even does most of the day to day maintenance including "hot swapping" cards or card cages or even whole racks with "hot spares" so that down time is unnoticeable. Soon even the humans changing out the "dead stuff' for new "spares" will be replaced by robots and an occasional human doing a remote review of the status.
 
My favorite part of this project will be that it provides a "customer" for the redesign of that intersection. It's a pretty dead area now, so the push to do something with that asphalt wasteland has been lacking.
 
Mods, please mark this thread as "completed"
 
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