What was proposed and what was built.

The Boston Crossing proposal is from some time in the late 1980s. Here's a Wikipedia article on Robert Campeau.

Across the street, the 'Commonwealth Center' proposal financially collapsed around the same time, leaving us with parking lots and a shuttered Paramount Theatre for over a decade. Eventually Millennium Place (now Ritz Towers) were built there instead.
 
DarkFenX said:
How old is that article? I remember reading an article before the ArchBoston v.1 crash that there was a possibility of two towers, 21-30 stories high, being built over Lafayette. Is that the same proposal?
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that one came after this one,which was proposed in 1989
 
did I post these before?
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bad pixs,my scanner is broken!
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Jesus. No wonder the people on Prudential Plaza don't want anything else built - Trinity Place looks nothing like what was proposed.

Bring back Chaps.
 
I dislike the precast materials on Trinity Place, but otherwise, I think we dodged a bullet.
 
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Disneyland Boston VS precast stump?

I think I'll take Disneyland Boston, please.
 
I have a particular disdain for Trinity Place. Maybe it's because a perfectly servicable multistory prewar building containing a series of commercial storefronts on the first floor, one housing one of the best delis around - Cheese and Cheer, was demolished to make way for the current building. Maybe its because the deadly combo of lackluster design and its prime location adjacent to one of the most significant open spaces in Boston, Copley Sq. What a missed opportunity! The building fails to engage its surroundings featuring an elevated landscaped terrace at it's prominent corner facing Copley Sq. The effect of which isolates the building from pedestrians and the surrounding urban environment. Maybe I dislike it so much because in retrospect it was the canary in coalmine of what was to come -this was one of the first luxury buildings to be built in Boston after the economic recession of the early 1990s. Many debacles were to soon to follow in the 1990s and early 2000s such as the Hotel Commonwealth etc.
 
I ask again, doesn't anyone remember the proposal for the spoon to be put atop the Gehry building - aka, Tower Records?
 
Okay.

From Douglass Shand-Tucci's book, Built in Boston: city and suburb, 1800-2000:

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Gotta respect that plan's chutzpah for tearing down the John Adams Courthouse (which, granted, was in dire straits at that point in history) and replacing it with yet more brick plaza. Actually, no, you don't.
 
Also digging the Sudbury Viaduct. That's what we really needed was more elevated highways.
 
Charlie_mta said:
1959 plan for Government Center:

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what was the existing wedge building that splits Congress and Devonshire Streets? I would love to see that.

And what's with the hexagon building and surface lot at the Hard Rock Cafe site? Egad
 
Four things I like about the original plan:

- Hanover Street ties through to Cambridge St.
- The original wedge-shaped building was left in place at Congress and State.
- The One Center Plaza building has a gap in front of the courthouse.
- There is no State Service Center; instead the original buildings and streets were left in place.

Other than that, the plan is pure crap.
 
Visions for Boston from 1965:

Roxbury at the interchange of the Inner Belt and SW Expressway:

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Destruction of the Fenway:

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From Preliminary draft of basic design report for interstate route 95 and interstate route 695 in the city of Boston, Masssachusetts (1965)
 
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