South Station Tower | South Station Air Rights | Downtown

Not a total "Derailment" 😋 as there has been a discussion of what might be turned up archaeologically by the foundation work

Here is a tool of which I have become aware through the Universal Hub

BPL site lets you see how Boston streets have changed since the Civil War
By adamg - 1/20/20 - 9:48 am
You can use a slider to see Scollay Square change into Government Center.
The BPL's Norman Leventhal Map Center has created this really nifty thing that you should probably stop reading about right now unless you have some free time, because you're going to want to play with it right away: Atlascope Boston lets you enter a Boston-area address or location and then see what it looked like in the good old days (some of the maps date to the 1860s). Read more.

scollay2.jpg
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using the tremendous resourses of the BPL's Leventhal Map Center -- you can dial into a particular location -- say 700 Atlantic Ave, Boston, MA 02110 [South Station official address] on a modern map -- and then go back in time to see what it looked like 100 or more years ago based on maps from the era in question



It's a fun experience especially if you have a local address of interest to you from say your family [I took a look at a place in Cambridge once owned by my
father's older sister]

For example, in the view below, you can see the South Station area in 1938 (in the circle) and what it looked like in 1888 - note that the location of the tracks is completely different - and that they terminated at a different station:

South Station on old maps

If you want to learn more, the BPL is holding a session on using the site on Feb. 3 at the Jamaica Plain branch library (it'll be focused on JP locations, but the site's "Search Places" control will let you explore the rest of the Boston area).
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Note as of now it mostly works in the inner suburbs + Boston / Cambridge
 
sometimes i wake up and wonder if it's 1920 or 2020.
 
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In 1966, the BRA was fully expecting to demolish South Station and replace it with another bland 1960's urban renewal box. Thank goodness that bullet was dodged. As I recall, the Vietnam War and LBJ caused the Federal urban renewal funds to dry up, terminating the proposed Downtown urban renewal project (including replacing South Station).
 
In 1966, the BRA was fully expecting to demolish South Station and replace it with another bland 1960's urban renewal box
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I'm in San Francisco Bay area for work this week and took my first jaunt into SF via Caltrain. The "train station" in San Francisco is a vision of what might have come to pass in Boston.
 
fatnoah said:
I'm in San Francisco Bay area for work this week and took my first jaunt into SF via Caltrain. The "train station" in San Francisco is a vision of what might have come to pass in Boston.
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You mean this.
1600px-San_Francisco_Caltrain_Station_as_seen_from_I-280.jpg
 
fatnoah said:
I'm in San Francisco Bay area for work this week and took my first jaunt into SF via Caltrain. The "train station" in San Francisco is a vision of what might have come to pass in Boston.
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Technically they just spent (wasted) many billions building a new train station. Now they await the additional billions (that will never arrive) to actually build tracks to it.

If South Station Expansion bothers you, the Transbay Terminal should set your hair on fire.
 
Oh, everything is all connected.
The fun discussion got me thinking about LA's, somewhat odd Union Station.
3 words come to mind
1. Art Deco
2. Streamliner
3. Spanish mission

Yep: wiki says it too.
 
Yeah, I fail to see how the Caltrain station in SF has anything todo with South Station here.
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My poorly made point was that SF demolished its station and replaced it something barely better than a "bland urban renewal box". We're fortunate that didn't happen here.
 
Did anyone attend the Show & Tell yesterday?
I had high hopes of going but -- I was stuck in Winthrop working on a project
 
I imagine that once this project gets underway there will be many "walls of death" from shops being moved around there.
 
whighlander said:
Did anyone attend the Show & Tell yesterday?
I had high hopes of going but -- I was stuck in Winthrop working on a project
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I did. Pretty sparsely attended, no more than 30 folks I figure--although the meeting was graced by the presence of no less an eminence than Fred Salvucci, who I observed studying a slideshow presentation quite carefully.

I do think the claims of "needing to add 5-10 minutes to your commute" seem rather inflated/exaggerated based on what the renderings depicted.

Also, there was nothing on display that isn't already up on the website as far as I could tell.
 
fatnoah said:
My poorly made point was that SF demolished its station and replaced it something barely better than a "bland urban renewal box". We're fortunate that didn't happen here.
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Ah, sorry - completely didn't read that correctly. Also would agree, the Caltrain station in SF was underwhelming at best when I first used it, being used to South/North Station, Penn, Grand Central, etc.
 
Charlie_mta said:
In 1966, the BRA was fully expecting to demolish South Station and replace it with another bland 1960's urban renewal box. Thank goodness that bullet was dodged.
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Instead, we'll have a tower that will look like a stake through the heart of South Station.
 
i lean toward the Tabasco Tower gaining favor if not becoming beloved.
it won't have an awkward appearance from 98% of vantage points.
 
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The version before the Tabasco Turd was fine—well-proportioned even elegant. But Pelli can be a lazy firm and they coast too much on repetitive, interchangeable cut and paste design. They just thinned out the residential section with no apparent effort to make the proportions work. Ultimately of course the blame belongs to Hines but Pelli deserves some of it too.
 
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