Photo of the Day, Boston Style - Part Deux

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statler said:
The question is, can Boston afford to lose any of its Deco, good or bad*?


*The assumption being that bad Deco is better the average Modern+

Like I said before, I'm taking the long perspective here and saying that, regardless of how much or how little art deco we have in this town, the building is not worthy of being preserved forever -- meaning at some point it should come down.

The time when it makes economic sense to tear down an 875k s.f. building is definitely a ways off, but I say that day will eventually come, and when it does the archictecture of this building won't be (and currently isn't) enough to save it.
 
There are plenty of other Downtown buildings I'd rather have torn down long before Verizon (such as the ex-Bank of Boston "pregnant buildilng", or One Boston Place, or Fiduciary Trust near Dewey Square)
 
Fiduciary Trust maybe -- it's the smallest of the three you mentioned, and I remember hearing that its build quality is bad -- but the other two will be around in one form or another for a long time to come. Maybe they're ugly on the outside, but they're big buildings, and as of now I don't know of any tower approaching their size (or height) that has been taken down in the US due to the market declaring them undersized or obsolete.

Also, although One Boston Place is smaller than 185 Franklin (782k versus 875k sf), the lot 185 sits on is about three times the size, meaning it should be able to (at least in theory) support a structure of at least two million square feet.
 
To get this back on the topic of "Photo of the Day", there is an excellent series on Boston.com right now called Secret Spaces II

It includes this awesome photo:
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High atop the gold dome of the State House
The view from the top of the Boston skyline's brightest sight is equal parts inspirational and dizzying as it looks over Beacon Street. In 1802, Paul Revere & Sons put a copper shield on the dome to stop water leaks. About 70 years later, the dome was gilded with 23 carat gold leaf. The dome was most recently regilded in 1997 for $300,000 ? more than 100 times more costly than the original gilding. During that process, six pounds of gold leaf were delivered in a shoebox to the State House. The leaf is as thin as the cellophane that wraps around a box of cigarettes, Kraus said.
(John Tlumacki/ Globe Staff; Caption by Glenn Yoder/ Boston.com Correspondent)
 
This one looks like what a fat guy would see looking down on his pot belly:

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in that article i liked the shot looking out at Cambridge and the Charles from the penthouse of that new condo/hotel.
 
Is it just me or does the State House dome look like some crude 3rd-grade art project from close up?
 
Two things to this photo. One -- Best Buy is either opened or is just about to open.

And two, which is perhaps more exciting -- take a look at that dark blue Chrysler PT Cruiser to the right of the pic and note what it has on its roof... I don't know if it's Google or Microsoft, but whoever it is they're gathering up pics for the "street view" function of their map apps. Neato!

(yes, I just said neato, deal with it)
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Wow that is pretty cool! What street is this on? I can't place it...
And also when will Google and/or Microsoft be adding this neato street view thing to Google Earth/Windows Live? That truly is neato lol
 
That is 360 Newbury Street, the former home of Tower Records and later Virgin Megastore. Frank Gehry was involved in redoing the fa?ade back before Tower moved in. You are looking northeast at the intersection of Boylston and Mass. Ave.

Historically this was an office buliding, but I believe it has been changed to residential condominiums.

I'm pretty sure it had a Mass. Ave. address before the Gehry renovations in the 1980s.
 
Transit Building at 104-112 Massachusetts Avenue, ca. 1930
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kz1000ps said:
And two, which is perhaps more exciting -- take a look at that dark blue Chrysler PT Cruiser to the right of the pic and note what it has on its roof... I don't know if it's Google or Microsoft, but whoever it is they're gathering up pics for the "street view" function of their map apps. Neato!

Here is a story about that I think, it is in the Globe Today, it has some pictures and stuff so if you haven't already seen it, check it out.

Online maps take a new direction

By Scott Kirsner | August 5, 2007

In the manner of the great cartographers Gerardus Mercator, Abraham

restaurants in my neighborhood have high chairs," says Povo cofounder Max Metral. "So I might go on Povo to find those, but I might also tag other restaurants that I know have high chairs."

Sitting in the 1369 Coffeehouse in Cambridge's Central Square, cofounder Hasty Granbery demonstrates how easy it is to add an entry to Povo that lets users know there is an hourly charge for using the cafe's wireless network. Metral pulls out an Apple iPhone, and shows off a version of the site specially designed for the device.

Povo will succeed or fail based on whether users discover the site, like it, and are willing to contribute to it over time. The potential is intriguing: Neighborhood historians could "tag" landmark buildings with links, photos, and information about their history, and crime-watchers could indicate an alley where car smash-and-grabs regularly take place.

EveryScape, the company using camera-equipped cars to photograph cities, also has an element of user participation with the potential to make the site a major destination. EveryScape wants to make it easy for anyone to upload panoramic photographs and have them added to the company's three-dimensional maps. "We're trying to allow the world to help us build the world," says chief executive Jim Schoonmaker, alluding to the company's ambitious vision. For more prolific and experienced photographers, the company is dangling the incentive of cash payments.

When EveryScape was founded in 2002 -- and called Mok3 -- it was a cool technology in search of a market. Cofounder Byong Mok Oh developed software at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that could examine photographs and make assumptions about the geometry of the objects in them, transforming the pictures into three-dimensional environments. The original plan was to sell the software to video game designers and architects to help them speed up the process of creating digital environments and also create virtual tours for luxury properties like The Breakers in Palm Beach.

But in 2005, investors lost patience with that strategy. "We had all this great technology that we knew had promise," explains Ham Lord, managing director of Launchpad Venture Group, one of EveryScape's backers. "We saw that it was going to take more money to build a high-quality, shrink-wrapped software product, and we felt like the biggest opportunities tended to be Web-based. We weren't afraid of going after that." The investors agreed to put in more money (EveryScape has raised about $5 million so far), and replaced cofounder and chief executive Yonald Chery with Schoonmaker.

EveryScape decided to start mapping cities, beginning with San Francisco and Boston, and build an advertising model atop the maps. Though Schoonmaker is a bit coy about the specifics, a business like a furniture store will be able to pay EveryScape to have its interior added to the map, or for advertising on the site that will help users find it in the real world. (Unlike Povo, users won't be able to add information to interiors that have been underwritten by companies -- so there'll be no digital graffiti about the tacky couch or cheap-looking rug.)

EveryScape believed there was the potential to forge a partnership with Google, and met with representatives of the search giant's mapping team late last year at a conference. Schoonmaker demonstrated the new stuff the company was working on, and showed how it integrated with Google Maps, but Google didn't say much about its future plans.

Google's reaction to EveryScape's demo, recalls venture capitalist Scott Johnson, was that they didn't want to show favoritism to EveryScape over other companies. "They said, 'Gee, this is great, but it's our policy that we want the world to think of things like this. We don't want to compete; we want to enable,' " Johnson says. (A Google representative didn't respond to requests for comment.) But this year, EveryScape started to hear rumors that Google was going to integrate street-level photographs into Google Maps. "We started preparing for a surprise launch by Google," says Johnson, managing director of DFJ New England and an investor in EveryScape. The company learned Google was planning its launch for the Where 2.0 conference in May, and quickly hired a public relations firm and prepared a preview version of its site.

That hustle helped the company earn some ink when the media wrote about Google's new Street View feature. Google had partnered with a Toronto company, Immersive Media, to take photos of five US cities from a car. (EveryScape's photos seem to be crisper, and Street View doesn't allow users to enter buildings -- yet.)

Competing with big players like Google and Microsoft can be nerve-racking. They might become allies, or they might decide they need to buy a company to aid their competition with a rival. Or they might assign 100 people to do exactly what a small company is doing with 25 people, just four times faster.

While building another company, Firefly Network, Max Metral was quoted on what it was like to compete with Microsoft. "If you find something that can make you ridiculously rich, then that's something Microsoft is going to want to take from you," Metral told The New York Times Magazine. "All we can do is meet with them and try to see what they're going to do to us when they feel like doing it." (Microsoft apparently took Metral's quote as a compliment, eventually buying Cambridge-based Firefly in 1998 for an estimated $40 million.)

But if competing with monoliths is too scary, then you're probably not an entrepreneur. Because entrepreneurs are not deterred by the text that warns, "Here be dragons," and they're willing to start sailing toward the edge of the world to find out what's there.
 
Wow that is pretty cool! What street is this on? I can't place it...

A telling question. How long is it going to be until that part of the Mass. Pike is developed over? The area has to have one of the highest pedestrian flows in Boston; it's begging for a "re-knitting". I mean, wow, look at the size of the tree that's managed to grow down on the Pike's level...

Also, what is happening to Newbury Street? First a Filene's Basement and a Borders, now a Best Buy? So much for being a luxury brand...
 
^ File this one under "uncanny similarities between Boston and NYC," but it's funny how Best Buy has done almost the exact same thing in Manhattan in taking the retail space at 15 Central Park West.

And unfortunately for the treehuggers out there, that huge one has been dead for the two and a half years I've lived across the street from it.
 
I wouldn't say Tower Records was a "luxury brand" either, but I sure liked having it there. Best Buy is not really a worthy replacement.
 
it's funny how Best Buy has done almost the exact same thing in Manhattan in taking the retail space at 15 Central Park West.

The stretch of Broadway that store is on isn't really the city's most upscale stretch of street, though. There's a Bed, Bath, and Beyond just up the street, and quite a few unremarkable delis and restaurants. The surprise comes more in the fact that the building it's located under was otherwise seen to have a upscale effect on the area. People were expecting the Upper West Side's first Prada or whatever.

By contrast, this isn't merely a case of unmet expectations for Newbury. It feels more like a downgrade. I guess it's only appropriate that while the Natick Collection draws Boston's newest upscale shopping, Newbury accepts retail detritus worthy of Rte. 9...
 
True, but two things: this end of Newbury is much less upscale than the Arlington St end (I don't think anyone was expecting a Barneys to open up shop here), and the size of the space (46,000 sf) narrowed down the list of potential tenants quite a bit.

This all raises the question: what retailer would've been a good fit here?
 
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