Steinert Building | 162 Boylston St | Theater District

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shmessy

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My favorite "new" development. THIS is the type of thing that makes a city more interesting than just a big office park:

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/20...t-for-years/8MQY5GGMdKgxu8XMa58fBP/story.html



Steinert Hall

By Steve Annear Globe Staff May 22, 2015

Imagine it: the sounds of violins and cellos filling the room, swirling around the decorative molding of the long-shuttered theater. Or students from nearby colleges, strutting across the stage while belting out the chorus of a classic show tune.

That’s what the new owner of a building envisions for Steinert Hall — one of downtown Boston’s most intriguing secret places. The hall, a historic venue that’s 35 feet underground, has been silent for 72 years.

Developers from B Minor LLC recently purchased the six-story, 38,000-square-foot Steinert Building, at 162 Boylston St., across from the Boston Common.

Steinert Hall, which classical musicians have hailed as a marvel for its crisp and clean acoustics, is under the building. Long ignored, it has been used as storage for old piano parts, crates, and filing cabinets.

As developers begin planning renovations, a project that could take two to three years, they will draft a strategy to rehabilitate Steinert Hall, with the hope of reopening it to the public.

For decades before closing its doors to the public 70 years ago, the subterranean theater was a crown jewel in Boston’s performing-arts firmament.

“The intention is to really bring the whole building back to its former beauty, and incorporated in that would be to rehabilitate, reconstruct, and refurbish the concert hall,” said Jim Elcock, executive vice president and managing partner of Colliers International, the company advising the building’s new owner. (Boston Globe owner John Henry has hired Colliers to put the Globe’s Dorchester property on the market.)

William Mosakowski, chief executive of Public Consulting Group Inc., is lead manager of B Minor LLC. Mosakowski’s idea is to create a space that could serve as a concert hall or possibly a tourist attraction, Elcock said.

“They will take a look at how to best share it with the community, whether it’s a symposium, or a recital space, or a place for colleges and universities to have special events,” he said. “The intent is to fix it up — but not close the doors — and to share it and have it be a part of the Boston music, arts, and cultural scene.”

There’s no timeline for that plan.

The building’s former owner, piano dealer M. Steinert & Sons, has largely discouraged guests from visiting the old hall, citing safety concerns and code restrictions — hurdles the new owners must face head-on as they seek to reconstruct the venue. The hall has also been plagued by water damage over the years.

“While renovating this remarkable concert space and bringing it up to modern safety standards presents many intimidating challenges, B Minor LLC will investigate every avenue to try to revive Steinert Hall,” M. Steinert & Sons said in a recent blog post.

Paul Murphy Jr., owner of M. Steinert & Sons, said the company will move out of the building, which was built in 1896, while it is overhauled. The company plans to return when construction is complete.

“In order to upgrade and maintain the building, we have sold it to someone who has the depth and wherewithal to do something with it,” he said in a phone interview.

There’s a long road ahead for Steinert Hall, which includes a complex orchestration of drawings, bids, and permitting, said Elcock.

“I think there’s a 99 percent chance it’s going to happen. The owner was drawn to the building . . . . because of his love of architecture and space, and I think he looks at this as an opportunity to give something back to Boston,” Elcock said. “Given its acoustics and design, and [Mosakowski’s] love of the arts, he is going full-bore to refurbish this beautiful piece of space.”

Steve Annear can be reached at steve.annear@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @steveannear.
 
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This truly is the architectural equivalent of Lazarus Rising From the Dead.

To grasp the the magnitude of this turn of events, one must watch this 3 and 1/2 minute video from a couple of years ago.

I honestly never thought saving this priceless gem would ever be possible:

https://vimeo.com/18230808
 
This is really great news. Saving that unique concert hall would be a major accomplishment.
 
JeffDowntown said:
This is really great news. Saving that unique concert hall would be a major accomplishment.
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From an aesthetic, cultural appreciation standpoint, this is great.

From a hard-nosed, economic, iron law of supply-and-demand perspective, this might be a little nuts.

As in: how oversaturated with theaters is downtown in the first place? The "big three" on Washington St.--Paramount, Opera House, Modern--give the impression of being well-booked, and 2 of them are non-profit with institutional support. The Wilbur also seems well booked.

But the Schubert, former Wang? I guess the Charles Playhouse is OK because it has Blue Man Group as long-term tenant and that Italian murder mystery one. But has anyone missed the Colonial while it's been closed all these years?

Oversaturation is a real threat and a "tipping point" is a real thing. You can measure it via how many total dark nights there are in aggregate for all the downtown theaters, total attendance for when nights are booked, etc.

Now, if it were made into a self-sustaining theater museum...
 
Not sure why there would be demand for a Museum of Boston Theater if the Real McCoy (Boston Theater itself) appears to lack demand.

There aren't a lot of small/intimate music/concert venues in downtown Boston, though (as opposed to theaters, like the Colonial). Couldn't this work as a venue for intimate classical/jazz performances, potentially sponsored by colleges like Emerson/Suffolk/Northeastern or a corporate patron looking to do the city some good (Liberty Mutual, here's lookin' at you, kid)?
 
I don’t really know if downtown is oversaturated with theaters or not, but Steinert Hall is a different sort of beast from the rest of the spaces in the area. For one thing, it’s relatively small; it originally had 650 seats, and would likely have fewer in any restoration. People are larger now than they were in 1896.

More important, though, Steinert was built as a concert hall, not a theatre, and from what I’ve see in pictures, it would be nearly impossible to turn the hall into any sort of traditional theatre. The stage area is tiny, and there’s no evident space to add the back-of-house equipment needed for theatrical productions. So, if restored, it wouldn’t be competing with those other full-dress theaters.

Instead, it is perfectly suited to fill a need that has afflicted Boston’s concert life since … well, since Steinert Hall closed in 1942. Boston has no proper recital or chamber music hall, which means that most concerts that want the intimacy of a smaller space, or are presented by groups who don’t have much name recognition, find themselves in halls that are too big, too expensive, or physically and acoustically unsympathetic. The one exception is the Gardner Museum’s Calderwood Hall, which is a near-perfect size for chamber music, but is more or less unavailable to outsiders.

Boston has no equivalent of London’s Wigmore Hall (also built as a showcase for a piano company, but now an independent entity) or the Kleine Zaal (Small Hall), at Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, both of which are among the most sought-after venues in the world. We don’t even have an equivalent for the Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie, which is far less appealing a space than Wigmore or the Kleine Zaal, but is still an essential part of New York’s musical universe.

I’m not saying that Steinert is likely to end up in that elite group, despite what are reputed to be extremely good acoustics. But from the standpoint of performance spaces, that’s what it’s most suited to being, and I’m pretty certain there is pent-up demand for a concert hall of exactly this size and character. Even if the developer decides to go for a multi-modal approach, where the hall ends up as both an event space and a concert venue, I think they’ll be impressed by how many groups want it for performances.

The egress issues are definitely a problem. Does anyone from this group know if the ground level drops enough behind the building to reach the level of the theater? Could fire exits be built on that side of the building, onto what was once Carver Street?
 
Lots of interesting points raised above. As others (and the Globe article) note, this will be a labor of love for an entity not looking to turn a profit, but it could be a very interesting technological/engineering achievement which would add to Boston's cachet. A nice opportunity for someone with deep pockets who wants a legacy building.
The Calderwood Hall at the Gardner is, IMHO, a bust--maybe the right size but a downright stupid design that gives a big "f-- you" to the audience and says "this is about architecture, folks...go listen to music somewhere else."
So a jewel box setting for recitals is still needed in Boston, but it will be a very niche audience. Something else to think about is NEC's new building which I thought was expected to have a recital hall that would presumably be acoustically top-notch--that might be competition.
 
Oh, there's no question that chamber music and recitals are a niche market, and a pretty small niche at that. But there's definitely demand, as much from performers as from audience. I think tombstoner is right that NEC is planning a sort of small multimodal performance space for their new building, but presumably NEC groups would have first dibs on that. The new space might free up some dates in Jordan, but Jordan is also too big for most of the events that would be happiest in a pace like Steinert. Still, more is more.

Calderwood is definitely quirky. It can make for a fantastic experience for "non-directional" groups like string quartets, especially if you are on the lower levels. It's harder with events like song recitals, where the problem of seeing the back of the performer can become acute.

That said, even in recitals, the intimacy of the short distances and single rows of seats can make for almost terrifyingly intense experiences, especially when the performer uses the space well. Mark Padmore gave a recital there last year that was almost unsettling in its immediacy, partly because the the space. People don't expect classical song to be so visceral and, quite literally, in your face, but the room helped reinforce that.
 
Bowdoin converted a swimming pool into a recital hall. 280 seats, designed by Rawn and Kirkegaard.

recital-after.png


Shalin Liu in Rockport. Seats 330, designed by Epstein Joslin and Kirkegaard

performance-center-hall.jpg


A hall that seats around 300 would likely work.
 
Good thoughts, above. I'd add to the list of smaller, chamber music and recital appropriate venues, Killian Hall at MIT (~150), Pickman Hall at Longy (~280) and Paine Hall at Harvard (~340). The latter two venues are large enough for a chamber orchestra.
 
DBM said:
From an aesthetic, cultural appreciation standpoint, this is great.

From a hard-nosed, economic, iron law of supply-and-demand perspective, this might be a little nuts.

As in: how oversaturated with theaters is downtown in the first place? The "big three" on Washington St.--Paramount, Opera House, Modern--give the impression of being well-booked, and 2 of them are non-profit with institutional support. The Wilbur also seems well booked.

But the Schubert, former Wang? I guess the Charles Playhouse is OK because it has Blue Man Group as long-term tenant and that Italian murder mystery one. But has anyone missed the Colonial while it's been closed all these years?

Oversaturation is a real threat and a "tipping point" is a real thing. You can measure it via how many total dark nights there are in aggregate for all the downtown theaters, total attendance for when nights are booked, etc.

Now, if it were made into a self-sustaining theater museum...
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You are assuming this is in the same size and class of those other theatres.

This is in no way in that category.

With today's handicapped access laws and fire codes, I can't see how this would hold more than 300 people.

Your point is akin to saying "We have too many Legal Seafoods restaurants, so why should there be a Trader Joes going in?"
 
Hey - - the fire codes. Steinert Hall closed to the public in 1942 - - - the same year of the Cocoanut Grove tragedy. Coincidence or not?
 
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No coincidence, I think. I've always heard that the new fire codes after Cocoanut Grove were the end, or at least the beginning of the end, for Steinert. For what it's worth, Wikipedia agrees.
 
shmessy said:
You are assuming this is in the same size and class of those other theatres.

This is in no way in that category.

With today's handicapped access laws and fire codes, I can't see how this would hold more than 300 people.

Your point is akin to saying "We have too many Legal Seafoods restaurants, so why should there be a Trader Joes going in?"
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Yes, I agree with what you're saying there; in terms of genre/seating capacity, it's apples to oranges to juxtapose it to the market niches occupied by Opera House, Wang, Schubert, etc.

Still, there are only so many rich people, with so much disposable income, and so much inclination, per X amount of highbrow cultural venues. And I include Opera House, etc. as "highbrow," even if their shows are decidedly bourgeois, mass culture, only because the expense of the tickets these days limits them to economic elites, and I don't know how different economic elites are from cultural elites. Anyway, it seems like you're thinking in niches, while I'm thinking in aggregate.
 
Probably the closest that we have in Boston as a concert venue is Jordan Hall at NEC, and it is three times the size of a likely Steinert Hall rennovation.
 
Beton Brut said:
Good thoughts, above. I'd add to the list of smaller, chamber music and recital appropriate venues, Killian Hall at MIT (~150), Pickman Hall at Longy (~280) and Paine Hall at Harvard (~340). The latter two venues are large enough for a chamber orchestra.
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Tufts also built Distler Performance Hall (capacity: 300) in 2007.
 
So what are the developers planning to do with the rest of the building? More luxury condos?
 
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