[HN Gopher] How Boston City Hall was born
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How Boston City Hall was born
Author : goles
Score : 57 points
Date : 2024-12-18 13:19 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bostonglobe.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bostonglobe.com)
| Eumenes wrote:
| Its truly hideous. Old City Hall is beautiful. Why can't we build
| nice things anymore?
| Spooky23 wrote:
| We don't have skilled immigrant labor and the post WW2 boom
| made it difficult to win contracts with high quality building
| materials and artisans. The Hudson valley of New York had
| hundreds of brickyards until the 1950s and 60s. Bricks suck
| because they're made in like two places, because construction
| is scaled and needs cheap materials.
|
| There's no good wood because wood < brick and we cut all of the
| trees down. So now the cheapest path is pumped concrete, so we
| build giant reinforced concrete and glass structures that will
| literally crumble in 70-100 years.
| nilptr wrote:
| > Why can't we build nice things anymore?
|
| Well.. first start by defining "beautiful", we're waiting.
| Also, it's a 50 year old structure.. we stopped building "nice"
| things after WW2 mostly because costs were astronomical and new
| materials and engineering opened up all kinds of avenues for
| more modern construction.
|
| I've spent decent amount of time in and around Boston City
| Hall, the biggest problem with the building are:
|
| 1. The plaza in front of it is a damn wasteland. So much could
| be improved by building over the plaza and reestablishing the
| street grid here properly.
|
| 2. The Congress Street side facing Faneuil Hall is a concrete
| wall and a garage entrance. You probably can't fix the garage
| problem easily but the concrete wall with a proper structural
| engineer could probably reopened up.. of course, it would be
| expensive.
|
| 3. The interior while very interesting architecturally is
| really quite... I dunno, soul sucking. I kind of love the
| aesthetic inside but only from a "wow this looks cool"
| perspective.
| eber wrote:
| 1. They remodeled City Hall Plaza in 2022 [1], unfortunately
| not a street grid, but less of a cold wasteland than before.
|
| 2. Agreed regarding the Congress St side, though the added
| playground from [1] adds some interest to that side (before
| the solid brick wall part).
|
| 3. Agreed with the interior. Something like just changing the
| flooring or interesting lighting would make it feel less
| cold. The floor is either brick (I assume an homage to
| Boston's brick) or terracotta tile. As a very rare visitor
| inside, it's kinda fun to see how the
| decor/lighting/infrastructure works with all concrete
| (hanging things from the ceiling instead of nailing to a
| wall, for example)
|
| [1] https://www.sasaki.com/projects/boston-city-hall-plaza-
| renov...
| voidfunc wrote:
| Aware of the remodel and it is indeed an improvement in
| nice weather months but it's still pretty lacking and
| absolutely awful Nov to April which is.. close to half a
| year.
| ghaff wrote:
| I sort of agree. On the other hand, the outside on a
| waterfront in a northern US city is probably not going to
| be great for a good chunk of the year in any case.
|
| There are nice parks in the area but they're not exactly
| delightful in the cold weather months either.
| lucidguppy wrote:
| Older structures cost more because they lasted longer and
| were more maintainable. Growth was given priority over
| tradition - and we've had to deal with the tradeoffs.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| There's more to it than that. People were rejecting
| tradition. How many millions were slaughtered in WW1 and 2?
|
| There was a feeling that it was time to discard the old and
| do something different.
| deeg wrote:
| > The interior while very interesting architecturally is
| really quite... I dunno, soul sucking. I kind of love the
| aesthetic inside but only from a "wow this looks cool"
| perspective.
|
| Totally agree with this. I enjoy walking through the interior
| and I like the building overall but I would hate working
| there.
| pivo wrote:
| A friend worked there for years, she said different offices
| would either be far too hot or else freezing on the same
| day. There was never a comfortable room.
|
| If the interior offices were kept clean and tidy, I can see
| how it could be kind of interesting in a retro-futuristic
| way. But given that these are government offices, they're
| often full of stacked cardboard boxes of files and other
| mess that ruins the look. At least the building doesn't
| have drop ceilings (at least as far as I recall.)
| oceanplexian wrote:
| > Also, it's a 50 year old structure..
|
| I don't personally see this a good reason at all.
|
| The US had a good run building neoclassical government
| buildings in the spitting image of the Romans and Greeks, and
| we already know that when properly done the aesthetic will
| stand the test of time for thousands of years.
|
| As far as the improved materials argument that's up for
| debate too. Will Boston City Hall be standing in 2,000 years?
| If I could put money on it I'd say it's more likely to end up
| in a landfill.
| ocschwar wrote:
| It will not. I guarantee it. The vehicle emissions worming
| into the bare concrete are acidic. The water from rain and
| from the humid air slowly degrades it. The salt air doesn't
| help. At some point, sooner than you think, the corrosion
| will reach the rebars inside the concrete.
|
| All this could be prevented with sacrificial applications
| of stucco, but brutalist architects insist on keeping the
| concrete bare. It takes a lot of work to keep a building
| like that from crumbling under these conditions, and city
| hall is not loved enough to get the work done.
| ghaff wrote:
| I don't love Brutalism in general but it also just ages
| pretty poorly. Some of it is about the updating of really
| crappy interior decor but the renovation of the Boston
| Public Library brutalist addition really helped a lot--
| though still, nothing like the original structure.
| rayiner wrote:
| I work in the Watergate, and it's in terrible condition
| after just 60 years. The 1950s post-war mass produced
| house I grew up in is in better condition. Meanwhile, the
| Farley Post Office in Manhattan is so gorgeous 110 years
| later that they built the new Penn Station in it.
| ghaff wrote:
| I mostly agree. The backside is just hideous and the
| brickyard is unnecessarily a wasteland for most of the year.
| Boston's climate doesn't help but, certainly at least in the
| warmer months, there could be more of a welcoming commercial
| presence there like there is outdoors on the other side of
| City Hall around Quincy Market.
|
| The renovation does help somewhat; I agree with other
| comments. Rarely down that way any longer. Used to work a few
| blocks from there.
| lambdaphagy wrote:
| If architectural beauty is subjective, that's an even
| stronger argument for building stuff that broad majorities
| find pleasing instead of stuff designed by architects who
| write manifestos about how much they hate beauty.
| rayiner wrote:
| > Well.. first start by defining "beautiful", we're waiting.
|
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f7/No.
| ..
|
| https://wmf.imgix.net/images/70_hero_image.jpg?auto=format,c.
| ..
|
| Hundreds of years later, most people from completely
| disparate cultures find these buildings beautiful.
| tptacek wrote:
| Yes, those are two buildings people find beautiful. You can
| find lots more like it if you keep turning the dial all the
| way to "form" and away from "function".
| astrange wrote:
| It seems difficult to fit a city hall in either of them.
| tacticalturtle wrote:
| The one nice part of the wasteland plaza is that it can hold
| large outdoor exhibitions in a way that no other space in
| downtown area can.
|
| Inside the NBA was held live there recently, Boston Calling
| (the only largish music festival in the area) started there.
|
| There's obviously no massive outdoor parking lot in downtown
| Boston, and it would be a shame to have packed crowds trample
| over the common.
| Symmetry wrote:
| Samuel Hughes at Works in Progress has been writing a bunch on
| this general topic recently.
|
| Most relevant: https://worksinprogress.co/issue/making-
| architecture-easy/
|
| The big idea is that some art styles are easy to appreciate
| without training and some aren't, and we probably shouldn't be
| making public architecture that's hard for members of the
| public to appreciate. Similarly atonal music isn't objectively
| bad, I often like it, but I recognize that it isn't appropriate
| to use in civic functions.
| rayiner wrote:
| Because architects went from building monuments to God and
| creation to building monuments to their own narcissism. Notre
| Dame (https://www.britannica.com/topic/Notre-Dame-de-Paris) was
| meant to be pleasing to God. And by implication, to man,
| because man was created in the image of God. Boston City Hall
| wasn't meant to be pleasing to anyone. It's more important to
| "make a statement" than to make something that is beautiful and
| uplifting.
| tptacek wrote:
| The point of Notre Dame is to be a monument to God. That's
| not the point of most buildings.
|
| Ironically, the other example of a good building you've
| provided in this thread, the Taj Mahal, is in fact a monument
| to narcissism.
| rayiner wrote:
| The Taj Mahal is covered in arabic inscriptions from the
| Quran: https://www.wonders-of-the-world.net/Taj-
| Mahal/Scriptures-on...
|
| Public buildings historically had a religious significance,
| and architecture as a field was intertwined with religion.
| The current british parliament building, for example, is
| built in gothic revival style, which arises from religious
| architecture:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothic_Revival_architecture
| tptacek wrote:
| As you obviously know, the Taj Mahal is a memorial to the
| empress consort to the Mughal emperor.
| m0llusk wrote:
| The old city hall had a decorated cake look, but was a
| dysfunctional structure. There was nowhere to gather outside
| except the sidewalk. Entry was primarily through a large set of
| stairs that limited access. Once inside there was nowhere to
| gather, only a maze of narrow corridors servicing cramped
| offices with limited access to light and air.
|
| The new city hall makes people angry and generates comments
| about totalitarianism, but it offers a range of places to
| gather inside and out and is extremely easy to navigate with
| internal spaces that have plenty of light and air. Brutalism
| may be an unpopular style, but the form itself has quite
| significant benefits.
| Finnucane wrote:
| When you walk across the plaza in front of the building, you do
| get the sense that this is a building with a message. And that
| message is: We will crush you.
| jrmg wrote:
| It's truly a building (and plaza) that has to be experienced in
| person to appreciate it. It certainly provokes emotion. An
| amazing place I'm glad to have experienced. But I'm also glad
| that most of the world is not like it.
| ocschwar wrote:
| The one nice thing about the plaza is that when protesters
| show up there is no questioning their sincerity. You know
| they're not there for the fun of it.
| fatnoah wrote:
| Speaking as a resident of Boston and the neighborhoods near
| city hall, that plaza is such a contrast from the rest of the
| area. Everywhere around it has shops, alleys, and interesting
| things to see, whereas that plaza was an endless sea of
| bricks. They've dressed it up better now, but it still feels
| more like a missed opportunity than a useful civic space.
| ghaff wrote:
| I read a humor column once that had something to the effect of
| it was designed to be even more intimidating than Soviet
| architecture.
| ravenstine wrote:
| I actually like the building, but it does have that "Borg cube"
| feeling about it.
| paultopia wrote:
| Yeah I've always thought that the point of much of the design
| was to have obvious places to put machine guns to mow down
| protesters.
| hax0ron3 wrote:
| I've only seen it in photos, but to me it looks like the kind
| of place where a dystopian military dictatorship tortures its
| political prisoners. Or maybe like one of the army base levels
| from the original Quake, with its blocky polygons. I do see a
| certain charm in its architecture if I let myself enjoy the
| absurdity of it, but it does not seem fun to walk through all
| the useless empty space in front of it on a windy day with this
| thing looming over you.
| mazugrin2 wrote:
| And at least there's this there now:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cop_slide
| securingsincity wrote:
| Anytime i've brought my kids to that playground since that
| incident there is always someone either recreating or showing
| someone that video. The best exposure for a park really.
| don-code wrote:
| Architecturally, the city of Boston has changed many times. You
| can more or less pinpoint when a building was built by its
| appearance. City Hall's architecture is mirrored in most of the
| transit stops from the 1970s-era expansion. Some of them (e.g.
| Wollaston, Harvard) have since been rebuilt; others (e.g. Quincy
| Adams, Malden Center) are still concrete behemoths like City
| Hall.
|
| Anything built within the last ten years is, of course, LEED-chic
| - the building is a glass box.
| Finnucane wrote:
| The glass box thing started here too: IM Pei's Hancock tower
| was one of the first, from the 1970s. And like many
| architectural wonders, the construction was crap. I can still
| remember going by and seeing all the boarded-up windows,
| because the glass kept falling out.
| ghaff wrote:
| Though none of the Brutalist IM Pei buildings at MIT were as
| bad, my understanding that they had to retrofit a revolving
| door in one of them because the wind tunnel effect could make
| it really hard to open the doors.
|
| https://nowiknow.com/the-curious-problem-with-mits-
| tallest-b...
| FrontierProject wrote:
| Funny thing about the glass box. If you look down Tremont
| Street towards the bay you used to get a beautifully framed
| view of Old North Church. The sightline was considered a
| historical landmark (there's even a plaque for it in front of
| the Omni Parker House hotel). The Government Center station
| completely obstructed the view to Old North. Allegedly this is
| one of the main reasons that Government center is a glass box,
| it was the only way the construction was approved.
| katamaster818 wrote:
| non paywalled link: https://archive.is/mPF37
| light_hue_1 wrote:
| > In the 50 years since, architects worldwide have declared
| Kallmann and McKinnell's City Hall one of the greatest buildings
| of the 20th century
|
| I despise architecture as a field. This is widely reviled
| building. I work in a similar building that is extremely user
| hostile but beloved by architects; every single day, multiple
| times per day, we run into stupid limitations of the building.
| And it's particularly nasty for people with disabilities.
|
| In engineering we care so much about the end user experience. In
| everything from building fridges, to roads, to HVAC systems, etc.
|
| That these two people see this as a work of art, instead of a
| practical thing that humans need to interface with, and that the
| artistic nature of the building is more important than the
| people, is incredibly selfish.
|
| Selfish and shameful.
| bombcar wrote:
| Architects design what their clients want, and their clients
| want "a bold statement" because that looks good on the planning
| documents and photographs.
|
| If you want a well-designed building that works for the users,
| you can find architects to design that. It just won't be as
| well known because it'll work and do what it needs to do
| without pissing people off.
| fatnoah wrote:
| > That these two people see this as a work of art, instead of a
| practical thing that humans need to interface with
|
| As a Boston resident that has had to conduct business at City
| Hall many times, I couldn't agree with this more. The lower
| level interior spaces are dark and somehow cavernous and
| confining at the same time, while the upstairs spaces are more
| of a warren of rooms and hallways. Nothing about walking in the
| front door makes you feel welcomed into the space. Either the
| actual use of the building was totally disregarded in its
| design, our our standards for how we expect to interact with
| buildings have dramatically changed since its construction.
| 7e wrote:
| This is the worst building that exists in Boston at present.
| otras wrote:
| > It was in this context that the city decided to demolish the
| neighborhood known as Scollay Square and build in its place what
| would come to be called Government Center.
|
| It's interesting (and sad) to imagine what Boston could have been
| like without the damage of urban renewal. These neighborhoods
| could have easily become the quaint North Ends people love today.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_End,_Boston
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scollay_Square
|
| It's also eye opening to realize the extent of their plans that
| _didn't_ get done:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_695_(Massachusett...
| ghaff wrote:
| There's a WGBH podcast about the Big Dig and the first episode
| I think helps you appreciate why some of the interstate
| connections and routings around Boston are so weird.
| https://www.wgbh.org/podcasts/the-big-dig
| nineplay wrote:
| People who opposed demolishing the neighborhoods would be
| called NIMBYs today and would be blamed for the housing crisis.
| I'm not saying this to be snarky, just that there is a real
| push and pull there that I don't think is appreciated. There
| are some beautiful old neighborhoods near me which are at risk
| of being torn down and replaced with multi-unit dwellings. The
| residents say 'save our neighborhoods' and the activists cry
| 'greedy homeowners' and in the meantime the developers are
| rubbing their hands in anticipation of mountains of cash.
| ghaff wrote:
| That particular urban renewal didn't create a lot of new
| housing. On the other hand, that whole general area of Boston
| was pretty crappy back in the day. (Not just what's now
| Government Center but all along Washington Street.) It mostly
| didn't result in more housing; I'm guessing less. But burying
| the central artery was almost certainly a lot more positive
| overall.
| fatnoah wrote:
| According to the West End Museum site, the project created
| more housing units, but also led to a population decrease,
| most likely due to the decrease in the number of people
| living in each unit.
|
| This document is a fascinating read: https://archive.org/de
| tails/westendprojectre00bost/page/n79/...
|
| Comparing what they proposed vs what resulted is very
| interesting.
| ghaff wrote:
| Thanks. I can believe that easily. I assume a lot of
| what, if not exactly tenement housing at least adjacent,
| was torn down while generally high-end often waterfront
| condos were built.
| kitten_mittens_ wrote:
| Some of parcels in the doc on page 58 (K) in particular
| are interesting. The city ended up widening the road
| there pretty significantly. When they built
| https://maps.app.goo.gl/7yVzp4vm72Js3w618 back in '22,
| there was just one tower. The original plan had two
| towers instead of one (https://bpda.app.box.com/s/lsw68tz
| gu4g788h9dr4zvorlc6ohy0oy). The resulting sub area is
| only two buildings now, where there were tenements
| before.
| Texasian wrote:
| Oh please. Take a look at the pictures of "redevelopment"
| back then and tell me it mirrors modern practices. We're
| talking wholesale bulldozing of entire neighborhoods. Not a
| block or two, the entire damned thing.
| hax0ron3 wrote:
| Why would people be called NIMBYs today for being against
| replacing a heavily residential neighborhood with a bunch of
| government buildings? It would be different if the discussion
| was about keeping the neighborhood residential and just
| making it more dense in terms of housing.
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _It was in this context that the city decided to demolish the
| neighborhood known as Scollay Square_
|
| Leonard Nimoy (Mr. Spock) grew up in that neighborhood
| mazugrin2 wrote:
| There used to be a neighborhood around it that had architecture
| similar to what the neighboring North End still has, which is
| very distinct among the entirety of the Americas. The lack of
| imagination that existed back then that led to it all being razed
| to build this and the rest of the garbage of the current West End
| is stunning.
| jcstauffer wrote:
| I always think of the building (and brutalist architecture in
| general) as absurdist architecture, and I find City Hall to be
| quite humorous in that light.
|
| The general shape lifts up and is trying to appear as if it's
| floating, in contrast to the material selection. Think of an
| Elephant ballerina, or Douglas Adams "It hung in the air in
| exactly the way bricks don't".
|
| Another example is the Holman government building a few blocks
| away - with these ridiculous stairways through a massive open
| space underneath an imposing bridge of offices.
|
| Pure absurdist humor.
|
| https://maps.app.goo.gl/KUFh9jFkERjhp7MK9
| unyttigfjelltol wrote:
| City Hall is absurd in both it's appearance outside _and_ the
| impracticality of the design and interior. Rooms with giant
| concrete columns that cut off sight lines, rampant maintenance
| problems from elevating form over function , and the comfort of
| a supraterrestrial civil defense shelter.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| It seems to be intentionally designed to confuse and to
| disorient; misanthropic, as if designed by a demon.
| sdwr wrote:
| Yeah, it's friendly ugly. I'd be happy going to work there
| everyday.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| More totalitarian than absurdist. The whole idea seems to be
| elevating the vision of "The Genius Architect" over the needs
| and wishes of the people who would actually use the space, with
| a borderline contempt for what non-architects and even non-
| Brutalist architects think.
|
| I'm reminded of the time I ended up crossing the Empire State
| Plaza in Albany once in the dead of winter. Such a horrid
| experience. Surrounded by soulless impersonal concrete with
| wind and snow blowing and howling. I felt like a freaking ant.
| It's not the type of architecture that inspires and uplifts in
| person. It psychologically oppresses and beats down.
|
| Compare that to a place like Saint Peter's, which even as a
| non-Catholic almost took my breath away to experience in
| person.
| botswana99 wrote:
| I like brutalist architecture. And I am not the only strange one:
| r/brutalist has 174K members and the original fuckyeahbrutalism
| on tumbler.
|
| Think of it like being a fan of 486 PCs or pixel art.
|
| I do hate this architecture, though:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowellism
| genter wrote:
| I like to think of it like a car wreck: no one actually enjoys
| looking at one, but you still have to look.
| munk-a wrote:
| I really appreciate how functional the building is. It's
| extremely visually distinct while having really engaging
| vertical elements (I've always thought it evoked waterfalls)
| and lacking the functional flaws I've seen with other highly
| visible architecture (I'm especially thinking of the Gehry
| Building at MIT - that's whimsical in appearance but an
| absolute nightmare of usability with awkward unusable interior
| spaces and a long legacy of mold and maintenance issues).
|
| It's especially amusing that Boston City Hall is within a
| stone's throw of the only block that survived the fire of 1872
| and throws a shadow over Faneuil Hall.
| ghaff wrote:
| Stata at MIT has sort of grown on me from an abstract
| architectural perspective. But it cost a _lot_ and I 've
| never really heard good things about it from people who
| actually use the building though I've never been in it myself
| aside from the ground floor. It was also sort of justified as
| a landmark northeast entrance to campus but was soon pretty
| much literally overshadowed by a lot of newer construction in
| the area.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| It looks like something that has survived an earthquake,
| but not left unscathed.
| rayiner wrote:
| How Boston City Hall was born:
| https://www.britannica.com/topic/Frankenstein-film-by-Whale
| MiddleEndian wrote:
| I like Boston City Hall.
|
| Compare it to 28 State St, right next to it:
| https://maps.app.goo.gl/jjHpGGuPkxgjXiPT7
|
| 28 State St is kinda ugly, but bland and forgettable.
|
| Boston City Hall is so hideous and frightening that people
| outside of Boston know about it. Its appearance is a recurring
| topic in the news. That is impressive.
| mlinhares wrote:
| Yeah, if you're going to make it ugly, make it newsworthy ugly.
| That thing is such an eyesore.
| MiddleEndian wrote:
| In the same vein, I am jealous of Maryland's flag. Some state
| flags have some nice patterns, but most state flags are
| forgettable with seals. But the Maryland flag is so garish
| that it's recognized by pretty much everyone.
| jcalabro wrote:
| [2012] it took me a second when they said "Mayor Thomas M.
| Menino" rather than "former Mayor Thomas M. Menino"
| BugsJustFindMe wrote:
| Boston City Hall is objectively beautiful and photos of it are
| all universally awesome (though it could stand a good
| powerwashing). The problem that locals experience and cannot
| escape is that it happens to be located on a giant ugly swath of
| absolutely not a goddamn thing called City Hall Plaza. So the
| building itself is grand, but the experience of looking at it in
| person is pretty bad and ominous purely because of the
| surrounding environment.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I love it. It's an underdog of expression surrounded by bland
| forgettable towers. Maybe that says more about the neighbors
| but the contrast is striking.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| There is a third way between bland boxes and horror show.
| chrisdalke wrote:
| The whole plaza should be grass and trees, agree it would
| change the entire look.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| > Boston City Hall is objectively beautiful
|
| This opinion puts you in a very small minority, to put it very
| kindly.
|
| It is a poster child for the dystopian, a cubist insult to
| anyone who has the misfortune of laying eyes on it. "Abandon
| hope all ye who enter here".
| ramzyo wrote:
| Hmm, lived there for a long time and walked by Boston City Hall
| almost every day. I'm not quite sure how to differentiate
| objective beauty and subjective beauty, but at least
| subjectively, in my opinion, it's an eyesore.
|
| Agreed on all fronts that City Hall Plaza is a disaster,
| though. I thought there were plans to revamp it with the
| Government Center station green line revamp a few years ago,
| but not sure if that improved anything.
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