Boston City Hall

What a startling observation.

It's just the squat structure? I've seen so much worse. It's innocuous.

Lately they've only been talking about modifying it a bit. Lame cheap-asses.

It's like the FBI building. Everyone wants to demolish it. Trump saved it last year, however,

Historical preservation of random buildings is pointless. Buildings get old, unhealthy, and energy-inefficient. Take pictures of every angle and part of the building and make it available online. That way the precious garbage will be remembered and we can move on.

Trump didn’t save the FBI building. He decided their new building should be built on the same site because the original plan was to sell the site to a developer who would build a hotel that would compete with his.

If it's not unsafe, spend the money on urban renewal or afterschool programs.

It is an eyesore, especially for such a historic prominent city.

It's demoralizing. Boston is wealthy. They shouldn't tolerate such garbage. This shit's for Indianapolis and the like. Move on, Boston.

SOME of Boston is wealthy.

R9, can we say that a city, state, or country is wealthy if there are some who are poor? Is Switzerland wealthy? Just wondering.

Boston is wealthy in that it can borrow massive amounts of money at low rates. It has a AAA bond rating. That's wealthy for a city.

Ok. It's wealthy and a lot of its residents live in poverty.

Baltimore has lots of problems, but our city hall is a gorgeous building.

These days Bostonians are too neurotic (and/or senile) on average to support a new city hall. It'll be "historical preservation - this is who we are," or "we should spend the money on the ground helping people."

They have a very limited scope of imagination and possibility. It's about he past and wealth is a zero-sum game to them. This isn't Shenzen: they're not looking to the future or to what they call "superficial" concerns like beauty.

Actually, it's like most of America, now. NIMBYism and all that. Keep everything the same, etc.

It's being spun as a masterpiece of Brutalist architecture now.

God, we're becoming Wallpaper/Monocle now. Every ugly piece of shit is chic and "now."

LOL they're renovating it. God forbid they create something new.

Chicago is moving forward.

I guess Brutalist architecture isn't for everyone. I, for one, think it's absolutely fabulous.

Buffalo has a prettier City Hall.

It's city hall. It should represent what the majority or plurality is generally pleased with. Good contemporary architecture (maybe demolished in a couple decades), or more historical forms like R13 for older cities like Boston where the majority fear contemporary architecture.

If it's going to stay around for more than a couple decades, it's best not to build it on what's trendy now. Yale's Morse College and Stiles College are Brutalist, and everyone hates them. The new colleges, Franklin and Murray, are by that hack Robert A.M. Stern, and while they're a bit "off," they imitate old forms just enough to be pleasing to the majority of students and faculty.

Philadelphia, too.

Gosh, I'm so glad I live I London.

Here's my local town hall.

DC is nice, too. Fits in.

I love contemporary architecture. I'm a fan of The Fountainhead when it comes to moving forward. But for things like city halls of old cities that are kind of not inclined to build anew every 20 years (unlike .e.g., cities like WeHo), build it in the local traditional style but with the latest tech and efficiency, and keep the guts updated.

Don't build in contemporary styles unless you're sure it'll has a timeless beauty to it (Getty Center), or you know that the public will be up for a new building in 20 years and will be able to afford it (WeHo).

I've seen some really hideous Brutalist stuff. This OP one looks more Ruffian.

London's City Hall is good contemporary architecture. Foster & Partners. But it ends up looking shitty in 20 years, outdated compared to what's surrounding it, then I hope they'll build anew.

In fact, the angle at the link preview already hints at its being deemed ugly in a little while.

What is Brutalist architecture suppose to evoke in people? It just seems massive, looming, and scary.

R25 why would anyone ever call a beehive ugly?

I like their city hall. Gay Jon can take a hike.

R26 The closer you get to BCH from the plaza side, the worse it gets. By the time you get to the entrance, the imposing, monolithic structure gives the impression that it's going to swallow you whole, to be never seen again. Once you're inside it's no better. Massive concrete walls and rectangular pillars abound everywhere. It's the most non-human friendly building I've ever been in. The design aesthetic and its functionality are more suited for a prison.

Boston was immersed in a huge urban renewal program at the time. It was all in with the new and out with the old everywhere you went. Entire neighborhoods with close-knit communities were destroyed to make way for this and other area buildings.

Boston’s old city hall is quite beautiful, the brutalist new city hall is an acquired taste. The planned renovations to the building’s plaza should help. Right now city hall is in the middle of a vast windswept plaza, which makes the building even more unwelcoming.

People are SUPPOSED to feel small, overwhelmed, and intimidated, by government. thats the point!

New York’s surprisingly intimate City Hall since 1812.

They razed a whole neighborhood (the West End, architecturally similar to the surviving North End) and replaced with City Hall and a few bullshit towers that advertise on the highway with a billboard that says "if you lived here, you'd be home by now"

Exhibit A

Exhibit B

Exhibit C

The last surviving tenement from the old West End

Thank heavens LA City Hall was built in the 20's (art deco) and not during the brutalist period.

Yes, we rock

Brutalist architecture is butt ugly.

R33, my god, that area would have been worth a fortune had they kept it around. It'd be like the West Village maybe. People love that stuff (intimate streets, etc.). What a waste.

Boston City Hall is awful. The plaza is huge and barren.

There was talk for years of selling it off and relocating it. Good idea.

I live in the Back Bay. Going there (always for parking tickets) is like going to Moscow.

[quote]It's being spun as a masterpiece of Brutalist architecture now.

It's been a perfect example of Brutalism since even before its groundbreaking. It always has and probably always will spark controversy.

The newer versions of those (in)famous signs. See attached link.

R37 It's amazing how that building has survived through the decades. They've constructed high rise apartment and office buildings, the Big Dig, a new prison, a new Boston Garden, and submerged part of the T line right behind it and yet, it still stands. Imagine living there through all that.

I am here to defend brutalist architecture no matter what. It truly is pretty, in its own way. All architectural styles have the potential to be pretty when chosen suitably. And what better style than Brutalism to pick for governmental buildings?

Brutalist architecture = Mafia builders. I lived in a brutalist middle income housing project in NYC where they LITERALLY cut corners to save money in the buildings. Every living room had its corner missing, making each apartment about 20 feet smaller than it should've been.

I've no doubt the original plans showed rectangular living rooms in apartments that were 20 ft larger. Builders "We need to put an extra couple of million dollars in our pockets. Here's how we'll do it ...."

Atlanta's city hall is lovely. Years back when they needed more room instead of tearing down the 1929 tower and building a whole new facility the added on a huge open atrium addition to the back side of the building. The addition has a beautiful garden on part of the roof.

Atlanta city hall roof garden.

That looks very pretty.

R46, racism much?

Boston City Hall is a masterpiece of architecture, Brutalist or otherwise.

People are quick to deride it, but they have no idea what they’re talking about.

It’s really as simple as that.

It may be a masterpiece, but it left out the human factor in the equation of its concept and design. Architecture shouldn't just be for the sake of itself.

[quote]This shit's for Indianapolis and the like.

Don’t dump your garbage on us!

Tyler Brulee at R51. "You just don't get it." Yeah, ok.

It's city hall. I represents the city. The majority of the city hates the building. It's a bad building for the city.

How does the neighborhood where Boston's City Hall is get to be called the West End? Back Bay appears to be farther west.

Back Bay is new construction (landfill), West End is on the original peninsula

^^ Yes, the West End was built on reclaimed land in the early 1800s, well before Back Bay was around, which is also reclaimed land, and, if you look at early maps of Boston, it was west of the North End, one of Boston's oldest neighborhoods, so that's probably how the name came about.

The plaza outside Boston city hall has all the charm of the Sahara Desert.

It's the plaza I hate, not the brutalist buildings.

It's a masterpiece... of ugliness.

Nothing says "We take pride in our town" like a city hall that looks like a Stalinist prison...

It looks like a structure that was built on the cheap.

[quote] It's the plaza I hate, not the brutalist buildings.

It's obvious the plaza was designed to make BCH appear as imposing as possible. City Hall Plaza is not a place you walk TO (unless you're getting on the T stop at Gov't Center), but a place you walk THROUGH. There's almost nowhere to sit, other than a small area of staggered steps on the far side, and there's nothing to really look at other than the city hall itself.

I walked THROUGH once on my way to a gay bar. I never lived there, though, so I don't remember the name or exactly where it was. I think I was staying in Back Bay. Or else on St. Botolph St.

I don’t like that the upstairs is larger than the downstairs. It looks top-heavy.

My heart bleeds for Boston. Not. Its City Hall cannot compete in awfulness with Albany's Empre State Plaza. It's so big and so exponentially awful that no one photo can begin to fairly represent it. Behold! The southern-most extremity of this awful creation.

Some of the civic buildings in Manchester UK are pretty impressive.

The Town Hall was designed by the same guy who did The Natural History Museum in London, shame it's going to be closed for renovations until 2024.

It even looks good from the back.

More on (Moron?) Empire State Plaza.

This is the Forsyth County Courthouse in Winston-Salem, NC. Remind anyone of something else?

The pics don't do it justice - when you walk up to it, the cold dread feeling is worse. It's awful, but what can you do?

I don’t see the problem.

It reminds me of Juilliard. Cold and uninspiring - the antithesis to the artistic creativity the school expects from its students. I hated the building, especially the practice rooms.

The Plaza would be more beautiful as a sea of grass instead of a sea of brick. It would soften the harshness of the Brutalist City Hall. The beautiful Courthouse is also hidden away behind a modern circular building opposite the City Hall. If that building were removed, the beautiful courthouse would soften the harshness of the modernism surrounding the plaza.

The Juilliard has been redone.