CultureNOW - Brigham and Women's Hospital: Peter Vanderwarker

Brigham and Women's Hospital

There are no podcasts available.

Description

ABOUT THE HISTORICAL PHOTOGRAPHS
The Longwood Medical Area is like a secular Vatican within the city of Boston. Its 175 acres are devoted almost entirely to medical and educational uses and include six hospitals (with two others nearby), the Harvard Medical School, and seven other colleges or schools. Now growing faster than ever, the area today resembles a big construction site, as many of the institutions shoehorn new buildings into the already crowded neighborhood.

The Longwood complex began in the first decade of this century. The Harvard Medical School moved here in 1906, and its teaching hospital, the Peter Bent Brigham, opened in 1913. The original Brigham is the subject of the older of the two photos, made just after the hospital's completion. Peter Bent Brigham was a Vermonter who came to Boston in 1820 at age 13, prospered in the restaurant business and later in railroads and real estate, and left more t4an $1 million to found a hospital. Codman and Espadrille were the architects (they also did the fine glass-bayed Decorative Arts Building at 420 Boylston Street in the Back Bay). The older photo shows the formal axial planning taught at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris and then in vogue. The administration building (a link to the medical school behind it), with its Greek-temple portico, anchors an acropolis of brick pavilions spaced to permit the maximum in light, air, and view to the patients.

In the new photo, made in 1986, the old Peter Bent Brigham has become Brigham and Women's Hospital, after merging in 1980 with the Robert B. Brigham and the Boston Hospital for Women. New towers, drab as filing cabinets, sprout beyond it. The tower on the left is the Biosciences Research Building of 1985, designed by Bertrand Goldberg, containing labs for both the hospital and the medical school. The tower in the right of the photo is also labs, these done in 1967 for the Harvard School of Public Health. The tomblike entrance lodge in the foreground of the old photo has disappeared, replaced by an undignified little box. Also gone forever is the ambiance of sunshine and trees, despite current planning efforts to salvage some open space. But the power of the organizing idea - the temple and its axis - remains, giving some form to what would otherwise be chaos.

-Robert Campbell and Peter Vanderwarker, "CITYSCAPES - Hospital Corner", Boston Globe, 3 August 1986

map not available at this time.

Location

Francis St & Huntington Ave
Boston, MA 02115
United States

Nearby Items

Mission Hill Bike Racks		47 feet
Mission Hill Triangle		0.2 miles
Butterflies in the Francis Street Garden		0.2 miles
Harvard Medical School		0.3 miles
Longwood Medical Area, Children's Hospital		0.4 miles
Longwood Medical Area		0.4 miles
Rose of Venus Fountain & Archway		0.5 miles