What I hate about Boston

You got your damned insurance blood money; please fix this now!

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Boylston Street, across from the Common. That's the only telltale sign left of the April 3rd, 2006 scaffolding collapse on the then-u/c Emerson dorm.
 
kz1000ps said:
Boylston Street, across from the Common. That's the only telltale sign left of the April 3rd, 2006 scaffolding collapse on the then-u/c Emerson dorm.
Click to expand...

...if you don't count the tombstones.
 
What I hate about Boston: In a seemingly random act of violence/theft, a friend of mine (and a very, very good friend of my roommate's) was shot to death on Mission Hill yesterday morning.
 
^ I read about that. Horrible. Poor girl. Shot and both legs and in the chest? That's not right
 
she was an Athletic Training major in the Bouve College of Health Sciences. I am a Pharmacy major in that same college, but 2 of my 3 other roommates are Athletic Training majors. I used to go out to eat with the AT gang all the time.

It's terrible. Sad.
 
Funny how our "What I hate about Boston" thread is twice as long as its counterpart
 
he hates what happened to the building... is that winter st? I'm ignorant
 
Its the intersection of Washington and Boylston Streets (or is Boylston called Essex Street in the Chinatown?) You can see the RMV building on the right side of the bottom picture.
 
Toby you've produced many of these pics to date, mostly of the DTX area, which makes sense to somebody who works near there, ( I did at one point) I'm curious if you could provide your POV of what might have been done. I know you might not be an architect, but how much more could have been done with these buildings?

I dare you to compile a photoalbum of your examples much like Albarc and site your expert or non expert opinion to these.
 
I have a whole bunch of these old shots of the city that I've pulled off the Bostonian Society website, mostly photos of old buildings I like. When I get restless, I pick one or two of the ones I saved and shoot their replacements.

This is the corner of Washington and Essex. Boylston is renamed Essex when it moves east of Washington.

I don't hate wonderful buildings. I hate it when interesting buildings are superceded by less interesting ones, as is the case in my previous post. Would you call the old one on the corner of Washington and Essex an example of Ruskinesque Gothic? It certainly went well with its surviving near neighbor on Essex (now threatened) pictured below.

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In any event, the later building at 600 Washington is pleasant enough, but it isn't as nice as the buildings it replaced. It is an object lesson about what we can expect at Shreve Crump and Low...something that will probably be pleasant enough in the end, but not as varied and interesting as that which went before.

Rather than being overtly didactic about my opinion, I have posted before and after photos. Since you draw me out, my theory is this: Boston reached its architectural peak before WW1, and almost everything that has followed has been devolutionary. There are exceptions (e.g. 45 Province, although I don't vouch for what preceded the ugly old garage there), but as a rule it seems that most teardowns or fire casualties have been followed by inferior replacements. Reactionary stuff, eh?

I am not going all Prince Charles on you. I love skyscrapers and modern architecture. I actually like City Hall and Hurley too, just not at the price that was paid make room for them. I like the waterfront stuff (except the Harbor Towers extermination of India Wharf), especially as its antecedents were falling into the harbor.

I also wonder if a modern liberal democracy is capable of great architecture. I am not saying it is incapable of it, so I am not going Albert Speer on you either. I throw it out there for your views: have illiberal democracies and monarchies done a better job of it?

Anyway, I think that development ought to be focused on filling the gaps, and removing the crap, fixing the old teardown mistakes. Hello Turnpike air rights (hello Ned!), Sawyer parking lots, Congress St. garage, empty N. Station lots, Gateway Center, City Hall Plaza.

So what I hate about Boston is we tear down the wrong stuff, and don't put up worthy replacements. Don't believe me yet? See below for the first half of the before and after I'll be posting in 3 years.

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