What building would you nominate for replacement

Also, my vote (at least today) goes to Copley fucking Place - that ugly, barren, piece of crap - that somehow, manages to make one of the most structurally grand squares in the city of Boston (Copley is after-all, the closest thing we have to a "City Beautiful" central square) seem cheap. Also, it replaced the SS Pierce Building, which is (fuck, was) built with some heavy, Romanesque features which I really enjoy
 
Building(s): Cathedral housing project. Not because they are low-income housing but because they are low-income housing built the wrong, old-fashioned way - broken elevators leading to dark hallways in concrete-blocked, lowest-bidder style buildings.

I imagine you could fit 1.5-times as many people on the same parcel of land in higher-quality housing while adding - if desired - a number of middle-income and market-rate housing units, as well, similar to what the Archdiocese did down the street at Rollins Square. Add a bunch of retail - retail that's appealing to both residents who live there but also to their neighbors - so that the streetscape works well and brings people in and around it.
 
CantabAmager said:
The whole Huntington/Mass Ave area got shellacked on many sides the urban renewal club as part of either small-scale city plans, the Christian Science Center plans, and the Prudential Center plans - so I don't know what particular endeavor dropped that spaceship on Mass Ave. That particular building replaced a row of 4-5-6 story apartment buildings, most in the style of similar buildings still standing on Westland, Hemenway, and some of the streets in between. There actually used to be rows on both sides of Mass Ave, but the east-side was also eliminated to open up a view of the Mother Church. These 4-7 story apartment buildings always once stood along both sides of Huntington and were similarly torn down for a motel and those ugly-as-shit concrete towers along Huntington. Here's a photo of the area prior to full-scale renewal, you can a block that's already been cleared in the lower, far-left All of the streets west of Mass Ave used to continue across the street and continue to the east of Mass Ave - the coherent road network was another casualty of urban renewal.
Click to expand...

Great pic. Wow, that's horrendous, what was lost.
 
BeeLine said:
Carson Tower Apts. 1410 Columbia Rd. S Boston.
https://flic.kr/p/FSNtYh
Click to expand...

That is literally in my parents' backyard. Windy as a bastard back there because of the downdrafts. My father grew up in their current house and has told me that there were plans to basically make all of Columbia Rd. and Day Blvd. towers like that. It never came to fruition, obviously, but I'd like to know more about it if anyone knows anything.
 
Arenacale said:
That is literally in my parents' backyard. Windy as a bastard back there because of the downdrafts. My father grew up in their current house and has told me that there were plans to basically make all of Columbia Rd. and Day Blvd. towers like that. It never came to fruition, obviously, but I'd like to know more about it if anyone knows anything.
Click to expand...

The complex has a website http://www.carsontower-apts.com/. I love how it strategically avoids showing pictures of the actual building.
 
If Carson Tower were affordable I could forgive it, but is it even affordable?
 
deh74 said:
If Carson Tower were affordable I could forgive it, but is it even affordable?
Click to expand...

It used to be? I only can assume from a weekly rant from the "Lady in the High Rise" in the old South Boston Tribune's Speak Out section.
 
The 2 mid rise buildings on Beacon Street in the Back Bay (I believe 180 Beacon and 330 Beacon?) They dont look right amongst the older brownstones, and they are ugly as well.

This:
beac-180-2013-01-1.jpg


And this:

330Beacon-513x342.jpg
 
^Amen, especially the second. Damn that developer.
 
theSil said:
https://www.google.com/maps/@42.3510259,-71.066828,3a,75y,216.66h,113.81t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1ssT4No3XrkK2hzoglUJbtXw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!6m1!1e1


Whenever I walk past the Revere hotel I get angry. It astounds me that someone thought to build an entire high-rise that looks like a parking garage. Even the font of the sign sucks.

Perhaps the biggest shame though is that every residence in charming Bay Village is forced to stare at this concrete wall.
Click to expand...

Yeah, that one is another gift from the wave of BRA "urban renewal" projects of the 1960's. Originally a Howard Johnson Hotel, and part of the South Cove urban renewal project, and hatched from the same vat that gave us Charles River Park and Government Center.
 
Did any other city get as much brutalist crap as Boston?
 
Sadly, the city was going through it's first building boom in years right at the same time that Brutalism was all the rage. But about that Revere hotel garage, and other garages throughout the city, including the one off the SE expressway near City Hospital, how difficult/expensive is it for the owners to just put up some screening to cover all that damn concrete similiar to what was done at the new airport garage or the Channel Center garage.
 
JSic said:
The 2 mid rise buildings on Beacon Street in the Back Bay (I believe 180 Beacon and 330 Beacon?) They dont look right amongst the older brownstones, and they are ugly as well.

This:
beac-180-2013-01-1.jpg


And this:

330Beacon-513x342.jpg
Click to expand...

Does anyone know when those two monsters were built?
 
^Top one, 1968. Bottom one, 1959.

Right in the teeth of that period when half the city was torn down and mostly all crap was built.
 
Back Bay became a landmark district in 1966. I wonder if that building built in 68 was somehow grandfathered in or was already under construction.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top