CultureNOW - One Boston Place: Pietro Belluschi, Emery Roth & Sons and Peter Vanderwarker

One Boston Place
Recent Architecture: Workplace

Architects
Pietro Belluschi, Emery Roth & Sons

Dates

1970

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Description

ABOUT THE BUILDING
One Boston Place was designed by Modernist architect Pietro Belluschi, former dean of the MIT School of Architecture and Planning. In 2008, One Boston Place became the first building in the world to earn a Gold level of certification through the US Green Building Council's LEED for Existing Buildings: Operations & Maintenance (LEED EB O&M) rating system.

ABOUT THE HISTORICAL PHOTOGRAPHS
The bat-winged Chevy in the old photo is on State Street, about to cross Washington Street downtown Boston. A corner of the Old State House is visible on the left.

We're looking at what may be the worst case in Boston of a humane and handsome building being replaced by a hiding monster. The monster, of which we see only the bottom floors in the middle of the new photo, is One Boston Place, a grim example of the Darth Vader school of architecture. It is probably out city's least congenial office tower. In the old building on the same site, windows seem to look out at us with raised eyebrows; in the new, we see only an anonymous black facade that resembles prison bars. And since there's no such street as Boston Place, the address - like the architecture - refers only to itself, not to anything around it.

The older structure is the Sears Building. Look closely and you'll notice that the top three floors are an addition. The original, built in 1869, was only four stories tall, plus a sloping mansard at the top. After a fire in 1890, the mansard was removed and the new top added by Cummings and Sears, architects who also may have designed the original and who are best known for their New Old South Church, in Copley Square. The building was named for a different Sears, a merchant who made his fortune in the East India shipping trade. Standing on one of the town's best business corners, the Sears was wrapped with marble in the latest architectural style: the ornate Italian Gothic of pointed arches and patterned stonework, a style being promoted at the time by the English critic John Ruskin. In its early years, the Sears was home to bankers and lawyers; after the fire, it became for a time Young's Hotel. It was demolished in 1967.

In the foreground of the old photo, land has been cleared for what became a plaza and office tower. Both were recently renovated by architects Elkus Manfredi, who created the feature we see here, called the State Street Steps. The cobble stone paves and the sheet of running water are reminders of an older, maritime Boston.

-Robert Campbell and Peter Vanderwarker, "CITYSCAPES - One Boston Place",Boston Globe, 1998

map not available at this time.

Location

197 Washington St
Boston, MA 02109
United States

Nearby Items

28 State Street		218 feet
Unicorn and Lion		250 feet
Ames Building		283 feet
Old State House		329 feet
Untitled		374 feet
Polychrome Painted Star		385 feet
Site of the Boston Massacre		454 feet