Tree House Residence Hall Tower @ MassArt | 578 Huntington Avenue | Fenway

Re: Mass Art Dormitory

The housing tower in question is the Charlesbank co-op, brought to us by the lovely Whitney Redevelopment Project (also known as demolishing a historic street and building towers in a park). The base has a nice little repeating precast concrete detail on all 4 walls though. Very much rooted in its time.
 
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Who was Whitney? Were these built primarily to house med students and doctors and other medical personnel from the Longwood hospitals?
 
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Ron Newman said:
Who was Whitney? Were these built primarily to house med students and doctors and other medical personnel from the Longwood hospitals?
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Whitney was the name of the street. You can still see the stub of Whitney St on the other side of Tremont St. Refer to my post in the Brigham Circle thread for more information.

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Bad cell phone pic: Roxbury Atlas, 1915 - BPL Fine Arts
 
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Re: Mass Art Dormitory

Thanks. But that other post didn't answer one of my questions. Was the purpose of this high-rise redevelopment to house medical personnel for the nearby hospitals?
 
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Ron Newman said:
Thanks. But that other post didn't answer one of my questions. Was the purpose of this high-rise redevelopment to house medical personnel for the nearby hospitals?
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In my research, there's nothing that I found that leans either way. I believe that they were originally not as nice as they are now and were for lower-income families. Now they are just typical high-rise apartments with competitive market rates.
 
Re: Mass Art Dormitory

I found this post while doing some research in the International Village thread. Little did we know the "flavor to the skyline" was on its way!

mdd said:
From across the river these buildings look pretty nice. i almost wish they would keep the yellow insulation pannels, it adds a different flavor to the skyline. I took this photo from my office window in Kendall Sq. The building looks so small, where in reality where they are pretty massive buildings.

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Kz, very, very nice pics of my favorite new building! You captured her charm and beauty from every angle!
 
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Very creative use of vinyl siding.

Am I the only one who thinks it looks really plastic-y?
 
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Great shots kz. Thanks. Really like that first one.
 
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Nice pictures KZ! I think it looks sort of plasticy too, but I have to give them credit for going out on a limb with the design, using high quality materials, and paying attention to detail. It's a lot better than I was giving it credit for while it was still U/C. I wouldn't want a 600' tower here looking like this, but it's a really nice addition for its area.
 
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Great shots of a great building KZ. It's not the most beautiful building in the world, but it's daring and it works. It's the type of building an art school should have. Both this and the new Spaulding building are very northern European. I'd expect to see something like this in Amsterdam or Rotterdam. I just hope we get more of this.
 
Re: Mass Art Dormitory

So after recalibrating my expectations, I've come to actually like this building a lot. I'm still somewhat bothered by the way it orients itself to Huntington, especially with the awful landscaped buffer zones gobbling up so much real estate. But the building itself, as a tower and as an object, I like. It injects a ton of freshness into Huntington corridor. I also appreciate all the little design flourishes. It shows they were actually trying, which is more than you can say for most of what goes up in this city.
 
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The plaza is really freakin cool. Some of my friends and I have wandered around it after studio together talking about it and the building. We suspect that the yellow strips in the benches will light up at night. We checked underneath and there are electrical boxes under the benches. We'll see.

I love this building and my studio professor this semester absolutely hates it. We went at it for a half hour one day and we eventually just had to agree to disagree. He was arguing that we should just build glass or brick towers because that's what the area has. He doesn't see the importance or significance of this tower's language and what it truly represents about MassArt. He also called ADD Inc arrogant and egotistical for trying to make the building be like a contemporary painting on the skyline.
 
Re: Mass Art Dormitory

datadyne007 said:
He also called ADD Inc arrogant and egotistical for trying to make the building be like a contemporary painting on the skyline.
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It is an art school next to an art museum. making a building that resembles a contemporary painting seems to make alot of sense.
 
Re: Mass Art Dormitory

found5dollar said:
It is an art school next to an art museum. making a building that resembles a contemporary painting seems to make alot of sense.
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To directly quote him, a building should be a building.

I also managed to drag the fact that he likes The Clarendon out of him which instantly devalued his entire arguments.
 
Re: Mass Art Dormitory

statler said:
Am I the only one who thinks it looks really plastic-y?
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It looks just as plastic-y in person as it does in photos, but I think that's the idea here. Its aesthetic is plastic-y in nature, so why not look like it's made from plastic? I know the panels are metal but this is one case where I'm fine with the materials belying their true nature.

briv said:
So after recalibrating my expectations, I've come to actually like this building a lot. I'm still somewhat bothered by the way it orients itself to Huntington, especially with the awful landscaped buffer zones gobbling up so much real estate.
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That landscaping out front is nice but totally superfluous. We all know about the underground pipe running just in front of the building, but it seems the real problem here is that Wentworth won't shut down that little private road (Vancouver Street) sitting in between the grassy triangle and the new plaza. Maybe in the future something will be built on the triangle--it's not quite as big as the other triangular plot down Huntington that was built on a few years ago, but perhaps if they combine it with the road something worthwhile could go up and fill in that gap.
 
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