CultureNOW - Fairmont Copley Plaza Hotel: Henry J. Hardenbergh and Peter Vanderwarker

Fairmont Copley Plaza Hotel
Historic Buildings: Hospitality

Dates

1912

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Description

ABOUT THE HISTORICAL PHOTOGRAPHS
We deplore the pace of change today. But Boston's original Museum of Fine Arts, shown in the older photo, appeared and disappeared almost as fast as the latest sitcom. Boston philosopher George Santayana, in his memoir, Persons and Places, called it "the pseudoItalian terra cotta and brick Museum of Fine Arts in Copley Square never completed, and soon afterwards pulled down."

The museum was the first major building in Copley Square, later graced by the likes of Trinity Church and the Boston Public Library. Developers in Victorian times often
combined personal shrewdness with public spirit. Copley Square was the least desirable part of the new landfill called the Back Bay, far from the river and close to the railroad tracks. Because it wasn't very marketable, it became the site for a small park ringed with public institutions. The aim was to increase the value of properties in choicer locations while doing some good for the city.

The MFA opened in 1876. The architect, John Sturgis, had spent much of his life in
England. He was a fan of art guru John Ruskin and of Ruskinian architecture, such as
London's Victoria and Albert Museum. The MFA, like the Victoria and Albert, was
heavily ornamented with terra cotta - the first important use of the material in the United
States. Terra cotta, a kind of clay that is fired to extreme hardness, can be cast into ornament that is cheaper but more durable than ornament carved in stone. The MFA's art collection came from the Boston Athenaeum, the private library that, until then, had been the city's closest approach to a public museum.

Soon the MFA overflowed. Instead of expanding it, the trustees built a new museum
on Huntington Avenue, in 1909. As tastes changed, Sturgis's extravaganza came to seem florid. The old museum building was replaced in 1912 by the Copley Plaza hotel, perhaps the tamest design ever to emerge from the imagination of Henry Hardenbergh - the architect who, in his more fevered moments, created New York's Plaza hotel and the Dakota, the theatrical pile on Central Park West where John Lennon was shot and Rosemary's Baby was filmed.

-Robert Campbell and Peter Vanderwarker, "CITYSCAPES - Copley Plaza", Boston Globe, 1998

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Location

138 Dartmouth St
Boston, MA 02116
United States

Nearby Items

Huntington Avenue at Dartmouth Street		354 feet
Kahlil Gibran Memorial		387 feet
The Tortoise and the Hare		407 feet
Copley Square		433 feet
Art and Science		449 feet
Phillips Brooks		503 feet
Back Bay Station		560 feet