Ritz-Carlton -Back Bay

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statler

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The Globe said:
Indian firm in talks to buy Ritz-Carlton
Name of the historic Back Bay hotel would change if deal is done

By Thomas C. Palmer Jr., Globe Staff | September 15, 2006

The owners of the venerable Ritz-Carlton Boston hotel, temporary home to royalty and the rich on the Public Garden for 79 years, are negotiating to sell to Taj Hotels Resorts and Palaces, a luxury chain based in India, according to an executive who was briefed on the talks.

The Ritz-Carlton would lose its name if a sale to Taj were completed, the executive said. It's not known what the new name of the hotel would be if Taj bought it. It is the longest continuously operated Ritz-Carlton hotel in the United States.

The Arlington Street Ritz is owned by Millennium Partners of New York, which also owns the newer Ritz-Carlton near the Boston Common. Millennium declined to comment, and a spokeswoman for the Ritz declined to address a possible sale.

But the executive said Taj is expected to add the Boston hotel to its diamond-studded lineup soon. Taj owns 75 hotels, including some of the world's more posh resting stops for the rich: the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower in Mumbai, also known as Bombay, 51 Buckingham Gate in London, and the Pierre in New York .

The Arlington Street Ritz-Carlton, with its famous bar -- and until it closed early in 2005, also a famous restaurant -- has hosted celebrity guests ranging from Winston Churchill and John F. Kennedy to Chuck Norris and Leslie Uggams.

Millennium bought the Ritz-Carlton Boston, long the grande dame of the city's luxury hotels, in 1999 for $122 million.

The Ritz-Carlton opened in Boston in 1927, built by Edward Wyner. In 1964, Wyner's family sold it to Cabot, Cabot & Forbes, then a prominent real estate company in Boston, and Cabot sold it to Gerald W. Blakeley Jr., the company's chairman, in 1981.

An 18-story addition with about 80 rooms opened in 1981, after years of legal battles with Back Bay residents and Public Garden defenders.

The hotel currently has 275 rooms.

The property changed hands several times before being bought by Millennium. The purchase enabled Millennium to use the eminent Ritz-Carlton name for its new hotel on the other side of the Public Garden and Common. The Ritz-Carlton Boston Common is part of the Millennium Place development, which opened in 2001.

The hotel underwent a $30 million renovation in 2001, the first in 17 years, and reopened in 2002.

The first Ritz Hotel was built in 1898 in Paris by Caesar Ritz, who formed the Ritz-Carlton company after buying the Carlton House in London early in the last century.

Ritz-Carlton hotels existed in other North American cities, but only Boston's survived the Depression in the 1930s.

Thomas C. Palmer Jr. can be reached at tpalmer@globe.com.
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What was on the site of the Ritz addition before it was built?
 
Ron Newman said:
What was on the site of the Ritz addition before it was built?
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who would know that sort of thing? It was probably just standard row houses of the era.
 
bosdevelopment said:
Ron Newman said:
What was on the site of the Ritz addition before it was built?
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who would know that sort of thing? It was probably just standard row houses of the era.
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I'm guessing cityrecord would know.
 
Don't be so lazy

C'mon. The book's on your shelves, isn't it? (Wait, were you all being funny?)

According to Bainbridge Bunting's "Houses of Boston's Back Bay", The Ritz-Carlton Hotel building, at 15 Arlington Street, was constructed in 1931. The architect of record was Blodget Strickland (who also designed 7 Arlington Street, among others).

The buildings before that, at 13, 14, 15 Arlington Street, were owned by H.H. Williams; the architect was Richard M. Hunt. The building was constructed in 1859.

According to Bunting:

Very few Back Bay houses can be related directly to French prototypes.

"A case in point is the group of three houses that Richard Morris Hunt designed in 1859, within four years of his return from Paris. Erected at 13, 14, and 15 Arlington Street, the site now occupied by the Ritz Hotel, this group is conceived as a free-standing block consisting of a central element three windows wide, flanked by projecting pavilions of two bays' width. Four stories tall, it was constructed of brownstone and topped by the customary mansard roof. Despite the unity of the composition, it would never be taken for a Parisian residence. Its vertical organization as a series of row houses rather than as flats and its isolation as a detached building mark it as more Anglo-Saxon that (sic) Gallic. Yet the designer was surely conversant with current Parisian architectural styles and practices, for he had recently received a diploma from the Ecole des Beaux Arts and had worked in Parisian architectural offices.

The differences between French prototype and Back Bay product demonstrates the extent to which an architect was limited by the requirements of the American town house and perhaps also by the force of habit of the building trades of the period.

Nevertheless a comparison between the Arlington Street block and earlier Boston town house designs show that the designer had been able to carry over a good bit of French feeling in the grouping of windows and the use of projecting pavilions. The Hunt houses, which are no more French-influenced than a number of other Back Bay mansions of this time, should dissuade the critic from dismissing the hypothesis of direct Gallic influence in Boston merely on the grounds that its residences have substantial differences of appearance and feeling from construction in France at the time."

Richard Morris Hunt designed, among others, The Breakers mansion, in Newport, R.I., the Biltmore Estate, in N.C., the facade of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and ... the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty!

(Thank you, Wikipedia.)
 
Thanks, except you didn't answer my question, which was about what the Ritz addition replaced.
 
I have spent hours on this!

I have been trying to find out what was at the corner of Commonwealth Ave and Arlington Street, where the Ritz addition was added, around 1981.

I believe it was an empty lot.

I can't find anything to back this up!!!

Anyone????
 
Where's City Record when you need him?
 
this 1974ish aerial should help:

smd7.jpg
 
Wow, it seems to show something that we're not used to seeing: A vacant lot in the Back Bay.

But what was there before?

Good post Mike.
 
OK, that at least explains why I have no memory of the Ritz tearing anything down. (I moved here in 1975.)
 
This 1928 map shows five townhouses on that site. The corner house belongs to the "Engineer's Club".

Now I wonder how those houses disappeared and became a vacant lot.

(Your reference saying the Ritz was built in 1931 can't be correct. Ritz's website says it opened on May 18, 1927.)

From a Boston Globe article published September 13, 1981:

The 18-story addition to the Ritz Carlton, planned since the early '60s, includes eight floors of condominium apartments that are not yet completed, 80 guest rooms, two dining/reception rooms with capacities to seat 60 persons each, a conference room suitable for meetings of boards of directors, and the Grand Ballroom overlooking the Public Garden.

The condominiums are expected to be ready for occupancy by year's end. The 52 apartments, ranging from one bedroom to duplexes, have all been sold at prices from $240,000 to more than $500,000, according to hotel officials.

Built on the former site of the Engineers Club at the corner of Commonwealth avenue and Arlington steet, the addition at first was opposed by Back Bay residents and others who said it would block the evening sun and cast a shadow over the Garden.

It took the owners, the Boston real estate firm of Cabot, Cabot & Forbes, nearly seven years to gain community approvals and municipal permits for construction, which began in 1979.

The Carlton House wing was designed to resemble, and complement, the main Ritz Carlton building that was opened on May 18, 1927.
 
Except for: how and when did those five very prominently located houses go away? Was there a fire, or did the Ritz demolish them? If the latter, I'm surprised they were allowed to do it; the Back Bay has always fiercely protected its history and architecture.
 
Ron Newman said:
From a Boston Globe article published September 13, 1981:

Built on the former site of the Engineers Club at the corner of Commonwealth avenue and Arlington steet, the addition at first was opposed by Back Bay residents and others who said it would block the evening sun and cast a shadow over the Garden.
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Same as it ever was..same as it ever was.

Too bad we didn't listen to these people back then, maybe now the Public Garden woundn't be the dark, dingy and gloomy place it is now. :roll:
 
On the other hand, the Friends of the Public Garden were more successful in preventing the Park Plaza high-rise proposal on the south side of the Garden. Ultimately we instead got the Transportation Building, Four Seasons Hotel, Heritage on the Garden, and Emerson College expansion. I think that turned out fine.
 
Indian firm in talks to buy Ritz-Carlton
Name of the historic Back Bay hotel would change if deal is done

By Thomas C. Palmer Jr., Globe Staff | September 15, 2006

The Ritz-Carlton would lose its name if a sale to Taj were completed, the executive said. It's not known what the new name of the hotel would be if Taj bought it.

I wonder if they'll go for east meets west with the new name ... "Taj Mahal Boston" or maybe something Disnified like... "a Taj of Boston".
 
Bigelow & Appleton homes at 8-10 Commonwealth

The homes at 8-10 Commonwealth Avenue were built by Erastus Bigelow and Thomas Appleton.

Built 1864, demolished 1963, according to Bunting.

Might we assume the other buildings on this block were torn down, at the same time?
 
Engineer's Club, Boston

The first meeting of the Mechanical Engineering Society for this season will be held at eight o'clock this evening, when the members will meet as guests of the Boston branch of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in the Engineers' Club Hall on the corner of Arlington street and Commonwealth avenue.

The subject under discussion will be the measuring of the flow of fluids such as water, oil, steam and gas, that are employed in engineering practice. Slides of the more important types of apparatus will be shown and described by experts ...

October 14, 1914

http://www-tech.mit.edu/archives/VOL_034/TECH_V034_S0195_P001.txt
 
I was definitely obsessed with this ...

Don't know why, but I am obsessed with this plot of land.

Boston's building permits are all on-line, (at http://www.cityofboston.gov/isd) but there is nothing to be found about the property or properties at 2-10 Commonwealth Ave, except a lot of permits pulled for the construction of the Carlton House. I thought I'd be able to find more historical data, include demolition documents from when the buildings at 8-10 Comm Ave were taken down, in 1963. Nope.

In the book Lost Boston, by Jane Holtz Kay, mentions the building at 10 Commonwealth Ave (constructed for Thomas Gold Appleton) and says the "residence fell and the site remained a vacant lot for seventeen years awaiting the sleek annex to the Ritz-Carlton Hotel".

So, I would guess that all five buildings were taken down, and the site was an empty lot, during that time.

There is a nice photo of 10 Commonwealth Ave in that book, and, more interestingly, a great photo of Richard Morris Hunt's building at 13-15 Arlington Street (pages 169-170), and the building at 2 Comm Ave, from Arlington Street, as well.

Here's a postcard showing the two buildings, off in the distance, from across the Public Garden.

horz_front_real_sz500_qt80.jpg
 
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