Charles River Basin Historic District National Registry #78000436
Tags: Boston University BU campus Charles River skyline BU Bridge river college university Boston U Boston Univ Massachusetts Charles River Basin Historic District Urban Waterfront Boston landmark National Register of Historic Places NRHP U.S. National Register of Historic Places Suffolk County Back Bay Charles River Campus Fenway-Kenmore
Charles River Basin Historic District National Registry #78000436
Tags: Boston University BU campus BU Bridge Charles River skyline river college university Boston U Boston Univ Massachusetts Charles River Basin Historic District Urban Waterfront Boston landmark National Register of Historic Places NRHP U.S. National Register of Historic Places Suffolk County Back Bay
The Prudential Tower (part of the Prudential Center complex) is Boston's second-tallest skyscraper after the John Hancock Tower. Floor space within the tower stands at 1.2 million square feet. It was designed by Charles Luckman and Associates for Prudential Insurance. Completed in 1964, the building is 759 ft (229 m) tall and has 52 floors. A 50th floor observation deck, called the "Prudential Skywalk", is currently the highest observation deck in New England that is open to the public. The 52nd floor holds the restaurant and bar, "Top of the Hub."
It was the tallest building in the world outside New York on completion, surpassing Cleveland's Terminal Tower. Today, the Pru, as it is called by locals, is no longer even among the fifty tallest buildings in the USA.
When it was built, the New York Times called it "the showcase of the New Boston [representing] the agony and the ecstasy of a city striving to rise above the sordidness of its recent past". But Ada Louise Huxtable called it "a flashy 52-story glass and aluminum tower... [part of]] an over-scaled megalomaniac group shockingly unrelated to the city's size, standards, or style. It is a slick developer's model dropped into an urban renewal slot in Anycity, U.S.A.—a textbook example of urban character assassination." Two decades later, architecture writer Donlyn Lyndon called it "an energetically ugly, square shaft that offends the Boston skyline more than any other structure."
Tags: Back Bay Prudential Building skyline Massachusetts skyscraper Prudential Tower Prudential Center Prudential Pru The Pru Boston Suffolk County international-style Charles Luckman and Associates Charles Luckman & Associates Charles Luckman Luckman Partnership
Arlington Street Church, was built from 1859-1961 to the design of architects Arthur Gilman and Gridley James Fox Bryant. Supported by 999 wooden pilings driven intot he mud of Back Bay, the brownstone church features a 190-foot tall bell tower. The Unitarian Universalist congregation that calls the church home was founded in founded in 1729 as the "Church of the Presbyterian Strangers", becoming independent in 1787, taking on a Congregational model.
On May 17, 2004, the Arlington Street Church was the site of the first state-sanctioned same-sex marriage in the United States.
Tags: Back Bay church Massachusetts Copley Square national register of historic places landmark NRHP U.S. National Register of Historic Places Arlington Street Church Arthur D. Gilman Gridley James Fox Bryant Arthur Gilman Boston Suffolk County
The building known by Bostonians as the John Hancock Tower, or colloquially, the "New" Hancock Tower, is officially named Hancock Place. It is a 60-story, 790-foot-tall (241 meter) skyscraper designed by I.M. Pei and Henry N. Cobb of the firm now known as Pei, Cobb and Freed. It was completed in 1976. In 1977 the AIA presented Cobb with a National Honor Award for the John Hancock Tower. Pei's design of the Hancock Tower took the glass monolith skyscraper concept to new heights. The tower is an achievement in minimalist, modernist skyscraper design.
Minimalism was the design principle behind the tower. The largest panes of glass possible were used--10,344 of them. During construction, the double-layer mirror glass windows began popping out from their aluminum mullions during high winds. The panes had to be replaced with traditional single-thickness glass. There are no spandrels panels, and the mullions are minimal. Pei added a geometric modernist twist by using a parallelogram shape for the tower floor plan. From the most common views, this design makes the corners of the tower appear very sharp. The highly reflective window glass is tinted slightly blue, which results in the tower having only a slight contrast with the sky on a clear day. As a final modernist touch, the short sides of the parrallelogram are marked with a deep vertical notch, breaking the tower's mass and emphasizing its verticality.
The tallest building in New England, as of 2005 it was the 43rd tallest building in the United States, and the 112th tallest building in the world.
Its street address is 200 Clarendon Street. The company uses both "Hancock Place" and "200 Clarendon Street" as mailing addresses for offices in the building. The John Hancock companies were the main tenants of the tower, but the insurance company announced in 2004 that some offices will relocate to a new building at 601 Congress Street.
In 2007, The John Hancock Tower was ranked #142 on the AIA 150 America's Favorite Architecture list.
Tags: Hancock Tower Copley Square Back Bay skyline Massachusetts skyscraper New Hancock Tower Hancock Place minimalist modernist minimalism AIA150 Boston I.M. Pei Henry Cobb Pei, Cobb and Freed Pei, Cobb & Freed Suffolk County