Re: Millennium Tower (Filene's) | 426 Washington Street | Downtown
Awesome cities like Berlin, Barcelona, Paris, London... have no distinctive skyline at all.
London:
http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showpost.php?p=112037037&postcount=1356
Paris:
http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showpost.php?p=112902709&postcount=718
Unless you are talking about a different London and Paris that haven't been building like gangbusters for the past few years? Tall, bold designs, extremely high quality, and in a quantity I have never witnessed in Boston in my lifetime.
I am very happy about the street level improvements in Boston with all of the new construction. But, are we not running out of room? Are we not at the point where we often have to destroy buildings in order to build new ones? Are we happy with The Kensingtons of our skyline? Destroy the Dainty Dot, gain a Kensington?
I also hail from the suburbs (where I'm also currently stuck working) and so much of my viewing of the city is from the suburbs or driving in. Am I really supposed to look at, say, One Boston Place and One Beacon in downtown and say "these towers should dominate from the North forever". Perhaps part of my problem is that I have a very artistic view of skylines in general. I selfishly look forward to new large towers to reinvigorate my stale pictures and jaded view of the city from afar. Considering we haven't even built a 400' building in 10 years (around the time we went from comparable to Toronto's skyline to 1/4 the size) I am like a starving animal over here.
If you should compare Boston to any city, it's probably San Francisco. The same San Francisco that built their own millennium tower a few years back, as well as One Rincon (and now Two Rincon). They're basically a couple of years ahead of us skyline-wise, and are soon going to construct the Transbay Tower (1070').
My last analogy will be to skyscrapers and sports. To me, these are 2 of my favorite things that I am passionate about. I remember before Boston became titletown, and we were in a major drought. Should I have just pointed to all the Celtics banners and said "I am happy about these, even though I don't remember a single one since they were before my time, but look at all those titles". Our skyline lore is like this, mostly forged 25-50 years ago. If you see these skyscrapers as trophies on top of everything else, then the Millennium Tower for me will equate to the Patriots beating the Rams. Hopefully then the floodgates will open.
I might be less impatient if I was confident I would actually live to see these buildings built. I'm not. You can't take life for granted, and you can't take for granted that something will be built just because it's approved to be. In this case, the carrot has been dangled in front of us for over 15 years (since SST first announced) with absolutely nothing to show for it.
On a final note, if this tower doesn't excite you, stop posting here. For some of us, seeing something rise above One Boston Place, One Financial, Pregnant Building, etc is in fact important.
I don't understand why it is so crucial that Boston have some sort of mega skyline.
Boston will never have a mega skyline. I don't think you know what a mega skyline is. If we could snap our fingers, and have every proposal of the last 30 years suddenly built (in its best form) Boston still wouldn't have a mega skyline, especially on the world stage. It doesn't need a mega skyline, it just needs some new tall towers to draw the eye away from the 70's/80's big boxes that have dominated the view for 30 years.