You’re the only one trashing it. It’s not perfect but it’s going to fade into the background and be a huge net gain for the area. Hardly anyone is going to notice the windows much less spend an iota of their time formulating an opinion on them. Most people are too focused on their own lives to keep a running tally on the use of particular architectural tropes around town.
West End Library | 151 Cambridge Street | West End
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You’re the only one trashing it. It’s not perfect but it’s going to fade into the background and be a huge net gain for the area. Hardly anyone is going to notice the windows much less spend an iota of their time formulating an opinion on them. Most people are too focused on their own lives to keep a running tally on the use of particular architectural tropes around town.
This is the forum for discussing these exact concerns! This is where we talk about it!
I used to work at this station and there are a few buildings on South Russell maybe 5 feet away at the closest. Seemed to be mostly students so there was high turnover. Needless to say, some of the residents did not love hearing us all hours of the day and night. Some nice girls brought us a tray of deserts to ask us to keep quiet. Others found the phone number and called non stop. I think office space is a better use above residential to avoid issues as is the case on Purchase St.
I do think mixed use is the ultimate future of many civic structures - it just makes too much sense especially in such a central location to not maximize the envelope for other uses above the ground floor. I would not be surprised if either or both Engine 4 or 7, or BPD's A-1 district eventually get swallowed into a larger development- they're in prime areas, older, and I'm sure could use significant upgrades. Locally, the upcoming Assembly Fire Station Somerville is a good example, although admittedly that one is in a parking garage.
There's a few examples nationally and abroad that seem to work with housing, especially around Canada and the DMV area - with enough forethought and sound proofing, I think anything is possible - the most prominent ones I could think of is this one in DC I regularly walk past whenever I visit, where the fire section is isolated from residential via a squash facility or the one in Alexandria - there's apparently also examples in Vancouver, Wilmington DE, and Calgary.
I don't totally understand this concern about living on top of a firehouse. People already live immediately adjacent to fire stations, and they hear the alarms. I don't know how living on top of the fire station would be any worse. With modern construction, there would be a thick concrete slab between the fire station and any residential, which is a great sound insulator. Modern windows and facades can also be really sound proofed. Residents in a modern building on top of a fire station would probably hear less of the alarms than someone in a historic building down the block.
Yeah, same. Ages ago I lived on Mass Ave right near Boston Medical. Someone visited me after I had lived there just a couple of months and commented on the frequent ambulance sirens. I had already completely tuned them out.
It’s not a concern based in reason, reality or with an awareness of this little thing called soundproofing.
Really like the chosen design. LOVE the fact that the effort is pursuing the use of CLT.
From a design standpoint, living above a firehouse is just another challenge to design for. As others mentioned, folks already live adjacent to the buildings and grow used to the alarms. When we talk about combining the uses on to a single site though, there are code requirements that need to be met as well as marketing around pre-conceived stereotypes of living above such a use. My first instincts for such a building would be to put a jump lobby at the ground floor for residents, place a mechanical floor between the firehouse and resident lobby (this could serve to isolate the firehouse from the residential), have functional, residential amenities on the first occupied floor above the fire house and then start the units above that. This would provide a lot of sound and vibration separation between the two uses to quell alot of those concerns.
From a design standpoint, living above a firehouse is just another challenge to design for. As others mentioned, folks already live adjacent to the buildings and grow used to the alarms. When we talk about combining the uses on to a single site though, there are code requirements that need to be met as well as marketing around pre-conceived stereotypes of living above such a use. My first instincts for such a building would be to put a jump lobby at the ground floor for residents, place a mechanical floor between the firehouse and resident lobby (this could serve to isolate the firehouse from the residential), have functional, residential amenities on the first occupied floor above the fire house and then start the units above that. This would provide a lot of sound and vibration separation between the two uses to quell alot of those concerns.
stellarfun
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This the West End fire station in Washington DC. Original four-bay station was two floors. Redeveloped with a new station on the ground floor, a squash club on the second floor, and 55 units of mostly affordable housing above.
The station faces a busy one-way street. Residents are not likely to be hear or be disturbed by the tone alarms, as they are by sirens. The squash club does nothing to buffer the sound of sirens and air horns. I believe there are two EMT ambulances assigned to this station. Their run frequency is much higher than the two pieces of fire apparatus.
stellarfun
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In the District of Columbia, where this particular station is located, the EMS and their ambulances are part of the fore department. The street in front of the station in the image is a one-way street, with two parking lanes and three traffic lanes. Frequently, the fire engines and the ambulances will travel against the flow. (The whole block is signal controlled because of this.) They will almost always use their sirens when doing this. DC EMS ambulances perhaps have 450 runs a day total, a bit less than half of these are classified as critical. This particular station is probably one of the busier ones, given the population density in its service area. The two universities in/near its service area each run their own ambulance service for on-campus emergency calls.