CultureNOW - One Beacon Street: Peter Vanderwarker

One Beacon Street

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Description

ABOUT THE HISTORICAL PHOTOGRAPH

"Back in the days before suburban malls, people weren’t in any doubt about when Christmas came to Boston. The big downtown department stores, of which there were many, all fashioned themselves into architectural Christmas trees.

Electric light, let’s not forget, was at least as exciting in 1912 – the date of the older photo – as cyberspace is today. The difference, of course, is that the spectacular lights pulled people out of their homes and offices into a shared public world instead of locking them to their private screens. We’re looking at the old Houghton & Dutton store, on Tremont Street, costumed for the holiday in light bulbs – 22,000 of them, according to the press release – and an incandescent Santa who seems to float down from heaven like a helium angel.

The store came down in 1967, replaced by one of the dumb office towers of the era. One Beacon Street looks exactly like what it is, a tall filing cabinet for paper and people. It asserts a kind of boardroom self-importance with its grim cladding of precast concrete in the burgundy-brown of an expensive briefcase. It couldn’t be less interested in anything around it. It completely dwarfs, for example, the landmark King’s Chapel, seen at the right in both photos.

Office towers of One Beacon’s era often look as if they could be anywhere in the world. They don't bother to adjust themselves to fit their surroundings. One Beacon even attempts to ignore its oddly shaped, steeply sloping site. It just plunks itself down, a square peg on a trapezoid lot, leaving abrupt, meaningless wedges of plaza all around. The result is a powerful sense of aloofness and alienation. The architecture suggests that the conference call being made to Singapore, somewhere deep inside the building, is far more important than the immediate life of the surrounding city."

-Robert Campbell and Peter Vanderwarker, "CITYSCAPES - One Beacon Street," Boston Globe, 1996

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Location

1 Beacon Street
Boston, MA 02108
United States

Nearby Items

Pulse of the City		12 feet
King's Chapel Burying Ground Plaque		167 feet
King's Chapel		237 feet
City Carpet / Hopscotch		241 feet
Nine Zero Hotel		370 feet
King's Chapel Burying Ground		374 feet
Benjamin Franklin		376 feet