CultureNOW - Cohen Wing at Huntington Ave: Crissman & Solomon and Peter Vanderwarker

Cohen Wing at Huntington Ave

Architect
Crissman & Solomon

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Description

ABOUT THE HISTORICAL PHOTOGRAPHS
High Victorian grandeur shrivels to 20th-century efficiency in these two photographs of Huntington Avenue, made in 1893 and in 1990 from the same vantage point. The impressive building in the old photo is Boston Children's Hospital, built in stages
between 1881 and 1890. This was the first home Children's built for itself. Previously, since its founding in 1869, it had occupied converted townhouses at the comer of Rutland and Washington streets in the South End.

Solidly constructed of red brick, generously proportioned, the hospital deployed two wings, containing a total of 96 patient rooms, on both sides of a tall administration block. With ceiling heights of up to 17 feet, the wards must have been flooded with sunlight and fresh air. There was a huge playroom and - added after this photo - a series of glass-enclosed sun balconies on the south-facing Huntington Avenue facade. The architects were Winslow and Wetherell with Nathaniel Bradlee, all notable figures of that era.

Impressive as all this was, it lasted a mere generation. As early as 1914, Children's outgrew its handsome quarters and moved to the country - i.e., to Longwood Avenue, near Brookline. It remains there today, although no longer in the country. By 1917, the grand red-brick pile on Huntington had been demolished, an appalling waste of a valuable resource by the standards of today.

Sometime in the 1920s, the site was redeveloped as a 360-foot-Iong concrete box of
commercial space. Also visible in the new photograph is Symphony Hall, which arrived in 1900 on the comer of Massachusetts Avenue, at the far end of the block. A few years ago, in an era of depressed real estate values on Huntington, the Boston Symphony Orchestra bought part of the 1920s commercial block. The Symphony renovated it and, this fall, opened it as the Cohen Wing. Crissman & Solomon, of Watertown, were the architects for the renovation, and Walsh Brothers, of Cambridge, were the builders. The Cohen Wing contains staff office space, a gift shop, and a· group of banquet and meeting rooms.

-Robert Campbell and Peter Vanderwarker, "CITYSCAPES - Fall From Grace",Boston Globe, 18 November 1990

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Location

Gainsborough St & Hutington Ave
Boston, MA 02115
United States

Nearby Items

Frank Palmer Speare Hall		150 feet
New England Conservatory of Music / Student Life, Performance and Academic Center		286 feet
YMCA		506 feet
Symphony Hall		904 feet
Mural 2003		0.2 miles
Northeastern University at Huntington Avenue		0.2 miles
Northeastern University Inter-faith Spiritual Center		0.2 miles