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Another reason to leave City Hall alone
By Sean on Fri, 07/11/2008 - 10:55am
Count me a fan of Boston City Hall (though not its plaza). Apparently, the few who share my opinion are no longer citing the architectural value of the widely loathed misunderstood landmark. They're pitching its access as a reason to keep in standing where it is (and not move it down to the Aquarium site in a multi-building swap that may or may not include a tower-to-be-named-later).
It's also not very green to tear down a 40-year-old building. There's a lot of embedded energy -- the energy used to construct it -- that would be wasted in the energy-intensive process of building something else on the site. A lot of energy was used building City Hall. Let's not waste more energy tearing it down and building something else.
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Comments
I realize there is "embedded
I realize there is "embedded energy" in the project still, but you also have to take other factors into account.
The building is one of the most INefficient buildings in the city in almost every way. Its internal volumn versus the amount of space it occupies is very small. City Hall plaza itself occupies a prime piece of real estate that should be more developed than it is due to its proximity to transit options, thats what smart growth is about. I am one who feels there should be TWO tall towers on that spot with a plaza surrounding them. That would be the best use of the land from a planning perspective.
The federal government
Let's not forget that, for whatever reasons, the federal government has a veto over any changes to City Hall Plaza (thanks to the JFK building) and the last time the city tried to build a "tower" on the site (a hotel, actually), the feds said no.
Maybe if there's a change in colors in Washington to blue and Tom Menino stops sticking his tongue out at one of our two senators, something could be worked out, but in the meantime, we're stuck with no new construction there.
I've come to like the look of City Hall from the outside, at least from a block or so away. But as somebody who has actually had to conduct business inside, I still think that, overall, it's a wretched, soul-destroying abomination and the sooner it's dynamited, the better for all of mankind. And yet, I can't reconcile with the idea of spending a gazillion dollars to give Tom Menino his own palace on the waterfront, reachable only by a bus, so I'd reluctantly vote to keep it where it is for now.
Speaking of the JFK
Speaking of the JFK building... so long as we're leveling hideous monstrosities on the plaza... why not rent the wrecking ball for an extra day, and do the job right? :)
Does the JFK building
Does the JFK building include the tower[s], or just the horizontal bit? You can take the lower one, but I think the vertical bit is beautiful
Make the building way more
Make the building way more energcy efficient (easier said than done, I know) and get rid of the horrible brick plaza (replace it with some greening etc.). Win-win for all involved.
Sean, I happen to think
Sean,
I happen to think you're wrong about the virtues of brutalism, the architecture of poured concrete that excells only at brutalizing the human spirit. But let's lay that to the side for the moment, and consider your argument about energy efficiency.
It's actually tremendously "green" to tear down a 40-year-old structure. The argument about embodied energy tends to apply to buildings constructed prior to the second world war. Those structures relied upon natural ventilation and so included operable windows; were more dependent on sunlight, and so require less artifical illumination; typically have pitched roofs, which shed water and deflected heat, and tend to have been built more durably, requiring fewer repairs or mechanical system upgrades. Tearing them down and building anew tends to use more energy than it saves, given the reasonable efficiency of the existing structures.
By contrast, the worst era for sustainability in design is precisely the period you aim to celebrate, and is exemplified by structures like the current City Hall. It relies exclusively on its HVAC system to circulate and refresh air, making it hugely energy inefficient - and its high cielings and huge open spaces are enormously expensive to heat and cool. The narrow slit windows, set beneath overhangs, don't open and allow minimal sunlight, while the inverted pyramid structure deprives lower floors of even that illumination, and the structures brutal massing means that almost all offices are deep in the interior. Its flat roof is a heat-sink, and it leaks. It was built at a time when electrical power was tremendously cheap, and that shows. The dysfunctional internal circulation forces people to use elevators rather than stairways to nowhere, driving up power and repair bills. And let's not forget the most important shortcoming of Boston City Hall, often overlooked in discussions such as these. Because of its inefficient use of space, its vast lobbies, and its low massing in a city of skyscrapers, it houses just a fraction of the city's workforce. Workers must routinely shuttle back and forth to satellite facilities, many of which are rented by the City instead of owned. In short, from an energy standpoint, it's an expensive disaster.
Its only redeeming virtue is its site, easily accessible by varied and sundry forms of transit. So it makes no sense, from the standpoint of energy efficiency (whether you want to save the world or just cut costs) to rebuild the thing in a remote area largely accessible by automobiles. It's far more sensible to tear the place down, and rebuild a new, LEED-certified City Hall right next to the old one.
Hmmm...
Cynic, you write that "The dysfunctional internal circulation forces people to use elevators rather than stairways to nowhere, driving up power and repair bills." I'm not arguing with you, but I fail to see your logic. I think that people use elevators because they're lazy.
I've been witness to several instances where people will wait minutes for an elevator just to go up one floor.
But yeah, you make a lot of sound arguments. Again, I've never actually been inside, but I'll trust everyone's assertion that it's a mess in there. I'm less opposed to rebuilding than I am to relocation. And although it's a desert of concrete, City Hall Plaza is a great open public venue. If the building does get rebuilt/retrofitted, I hope that space is kept open. Perhaps replace it with grass?
Elevators/escalators
There's no easy way to maneuver inside of City Hall. The easiest way is usually to reach your floor first, then wander to the correct office/window. There is no easier way to do that than the elevators. Some staircases only go a floor or two at most. Escalators are at one end and not the other, etc.
You have never been inside?
You have never been inside? Then why in hell are you even commenting? Desert of concrete? Have you even been down there? It's brick and it's a horrible, dysfunctional wasteland of a "plaza". Have you never had to walk across that wasteland the 4 months of the year when the weather here is cold, or the 3 months when it's hot? That leaves 5 months when the 'plaza' is just a boring eye sore.
The only point you got right is that relocation is a foolish idea.
Also a fan (converted)
I used to hate the City Hall building, but within the past few years I've come to really like it (especially juxtaposed with the Sears Crescent - nice!). Ideally:
1. Something needs to be done with the plaza. And I'm not talking about barbecue festivals or circuses. It needs to be a more social place to be on a daily basis.
2. The Center Plaza building should be torn down.
3. The Kennedy Building should probably be torn down, too, but it's less horrible to me than Center Plaza.
2 & 3 are beyond what the city gov't can do alone, but they're on my wish list. It's not the City Hall building itself that's makes Government Center so crappy - it's these buildings that surround it.
My favorite part of city
My favorite part of city hall: the huge Stalin-esque portrait on the side. The whole building just screams Soviet Bloc.
It's gross
I don't really give a crap about the eco-nut-friendlyness of the situation, I just think it's a tremendous waste of space. Unless an effort was made to bring a lot more public events to the brick-scape, and prevent massive ponds of water and ice from gathering there, it should defintely get the heave-ho. One or more new towers would be wonderful. Maybe we can get some funding for the Red-Blue subway connector at Charles out of the deal.
It's the space that makes it great
I like City Hall and the plaza from the outside. The fact that the space is so "wasted" is what makes it great. It says something like "we are so prosperous and benevolent a city that we can leave all of this prime real estate undeveloped for the use of the public". It is a truly grand space and fantastic when used in grand ways such as victory rallies. Granted, it could use more activity. Maybe have a few "oasisis" with fountains and some trees and benches, some small cafes/bars around the edges. Of course, the city couldn't keep the original fountains there going, but that's another story.
I think the building itself is striking, sort of stands for the jumbled mess that city government is.
I have spent very little time inside, so I can't say too much about it. But, before tearing it down there should be a long hard look at how it could be improved inside.
Go spend some time inside
And you'd begin to realize how impossible a task it would be to improve it.
The entire giant lobby feels like something out of 1984, dark and designed to crush your spirit. Climb up the stairs a bit and you look up and up and up and there's this little window that seems designed to impress on you the fact you've just been imprisoned and are NEVER getting out. And I don't know what city workers did to deserve concrete walls on the inside (many of the working spaces I've seen would be right at home on the set of Brazil or Beetlejuice).
Contest to Improve Inside?
I also get the impression that it would be difficult to redesign the inside, but until you get experts like architects to really think about it, you don't know for sure what can and can't be done. Walls can be covered with other things, concrete can be jackhammered, lighting can be changed, etc., etc.
The original building design was the result of an architectural contest. Maybe they should have a contest for to see who can come up with the best improvement plan for the inside.
City Hall Plaza and sports victory rallies
We've had six major league sports victories so far this decade, and only two of them (2002 and 2004 Super Bowls) resulted in a City Hall Plaza victory rally. The 2005 Patriots Super Bowl win, the two Red Sox World Series victories, and last month's Celtics championship were all celebrated only with parades, not rallies.
In the Celtics case, City Hall Plaza was unavailable because a Phantom Gourmet barbeque festival occupied it. But what about the others?
City Hall Plaza
I think City Hall Plaza would be alot nicer if they tore up the bricks and threw down some grass and trees instead. It would be another place to hang around on your lunch break besides the Common. I think alot of people would care less about how the building looks if the space around it was utilitized a bit better.
Lifespan of public vs. private buildings
I'm constantly amazed at how quickly people want to spend money to replace an "old" public building. Whether it's City Hall or a school (Newton North, for example), the mentality is always "tear it down and build another". Compare this with private buildings. The Pru is around 40 years old, right? I don't see anybody wanting to knock it down.
Simple answer
That's because it doesn't look like crap.
I like City Hall better than the Pru
And, I'd tear down International Place in a heartbeat (allowing current occupants a few minutes to get out).
I used to hate the Pru, but I don't anymore
The Pru used to be an awful place because of the open-air, windswept, mis-conceived shopping corridors that surrounded it. Enclosing this into a mall, and connecting it to the neighboring Copley Place mall and hotels, did a lot to humanize the space.
Well, then, you're wrong on
Well, then, you're wrong on two counts.
In 1986, there was a serious proposal to revamp the Pru by Tom Dolle, who wanted to crown it with a majestic spire instead of a box, which looked pretty frickin' awesome. The proposal has been revived periodically, most recently in 2005, as a remedy for what Ada Louise Huxtable termed "textbook example of urban character assassination."
But more to the point, if there's any attitude which characterizes Boston, it most certainly is not "tear it down and build another." This city is among the nation's leaders in historic preservation, makes a reasonable claim to be the birthplace of that movement, and is among the most difficult places in America to build anything at all that's new, particularly when it comes at the expense of something old. In fact, City Hall is a paradigmatic example - a building that's universally loathed by its users, and widely despised by residents, is still a major rallying point for preservtionists. There's virtually nothing that's old in this town that some group or another isn't willing to preserve from something new.
But I suspect that what's really bothering you is the notion that, heaven forfend, the public mind expend public monies on public projects. Perish the thought! What happened to Yankee frugality, to pinching pennies, to getting by with what we have?
As I've tried my best to explain in this thread, and in the one which preceeded it, our current City Hall is a money sink - tremendously inefficient and expensive to operate. Replacing the structure in a reasonable fashion makes eminent financial sense. (And, as long as we're on the subject, it's worth noting that even Newton North is hardly the boondoggle it's often claimed to be - renovating the building was never a practical option, and though the structure is certainly more elaborate and expensive than it needs to be, the cost is actually perfectly ordinary for a city of Newton's size and wealth.) The real problem is the reluctance of the mayor, and of so many of his constituents, to recognize that a great city deserves great public facilities. Indeed, that building such facilities is ultimately cost-effective. And that the proper way to pay for such things isn't by auctioning off public resources to the affluent, but by using a capital budget effectively.
Let me try another angle...
Why are 40-year-old buildings no longer usable? My point was that these really aren't old buildings. I've never been into City Hall or Newton North, and I'll take people's word that they are a bit sub-standard. But, 40 years for any building is young, especially a commercial building. So no, it isn't the fact that money is being spent on a public space, it's that we built something that should be semi-permanent, and people want to toss it after 40 years.
But, let me try to answer my own question about why 40-year-old buildings no longer being usable: Because they are public buildings. They are designed and built with politicians getting their 2 cents in. They are poorly built because contracts have to go to the lowest bidder, not to mention that all minorities, sexual preferences, and religious factions have to represented in the construction. So, from day 1, you end up with a piece o' crap whose roof leaks, a fluky HVAC system that pumps heat on summer days, elevators that have the attitude of a union worker, etc. So now you have a new building with all the old problems. Great. Hey, maybe I'm wrong, it's just a guess.
Not to mention
The voltage
Most City Halls in
Most City Halls in Massachusetts have been around for quite a while.
The second worst city hall in the state belongs to
Everett
I know its a middle class community north of the city but thats no excuse check out the comparable income neighbors:
Chelsea
Revere
Winthrop
So after we replace Boston city hall send the demo crew up to Everett for a few minutes as well please...
With you most of the way
In another 40 years (maybe as few as 10), we're going to look at the replacement of Newton North as a failure of imagination and political will on a massive scale.
Lots of the problems are eminently fixable. It could have been very creatively renovated/adaptively re-used. And, the new building is hardly a paragon of good design, itself. Among other things, it is a horribly inefficient design. The same program could have been achieved in a much more cost-effective way, without sacrificing aspirations of greatness. Finally, even if its cost is not out-of-line with other communities, it's out-of-line with the current means of its community.
I couldn't agree more that all cities deserve great architecture. But, great architecture involves risk. If nothing else, Boston City Hall is a symbol of a proud city taking a risk in pursuit of excellence.
Fail
You've got a point there: you can't have an epic fail like City Hall without taking a risk. That's a perverse kind of pride to take, but at least it's cheap.
Thanks for responding, Sean.
Thanks for responding, Sean. And it certainly isn't my intention to defend the new Newton North - it's quite clear that its cost is far higher than it needed to be, without delivering commensurate benefits.
But I have to fundamentally disagree about City Hall, and with murph's explanation of what goes wrong in public building. It was indeed a tremendous risk. My point isn't that it wasn't worth taking, but rather, that the gamble failed. Instead of an inspiring public facility, we got a dump. That's OK. It's a problem that's hardly unique to the public sector, either - there's never been any shortage of atrocious commercial projects. The problem is that the stakes tend to be far higher with public projects, largely because it's so difficult to replace them after they're built. If City Hall had been a private office building, within a decade or two it would have been visited by the wrecking ball. An ambitious developer would've bought the site, knocked down the building, replaced it with a taller structure making more efficient use of the space, and made a mint.
There's a real danger that, by making it difficult to undo our errors, we raise the effective cost of risk-taking in public architecture. If our attitude is that we need to utilize public facilities until they literally crumble into ruins, in order to get our money's worth, then we'll end up producing bland structures that people know they can live with, because they're going to be stuck with them one way or the other. That discourages taking chances. Conversely, there's no better way to encourage risk-taking in public design than by demonstrating a willingness to pay for our mistakes by replacing them with something better.
And all of that, I think, provides a better explanation of why public buildings often seem inferior to private structures than those that murph offers. If a public building is striking and succesful, it won't command higher rents. If it's ugly and dysfunctional, its tennants won't move out - they'll be stuck with it. Maintenance tends to be deferred, and upgrades are all-but-unheard of - after all, continuing investment won't result in higher rents, either. Even the cost savings, which ought to be a major factor, rarely come into play during the term of any individual office-holder. The only real incentive to design, build, and maintain superior buildings is public pressure.
So what we need, I submit, is a public outcry. A genuine demand for this city to get the City Hall that it deserves. And a demonstrated public willingness to shoulder some risks - as manifested by a willingness to pay to replace buildings when those risks turn out to fail. Is that too much to ask?
Before we get the City Hall we deserve
I'd want the public school system we deserve first (conflict-of-interest note: I'm a BPS parent). I'm sure others could make the case for other firsts, from roads to police coverage.
I don't dispute that the
I don't dispute that the city has many, many things that would benefit from the mayor's attention more than city hall.
But, for what it's worth, I'd point out that this isn't an either/or. There's a good case to be made that a new City Hall might largely pay for itself, over time, in cost savings to the city, even without auctioning off the land. A taller, more space-efficient structure could permit the consolidation of the workforce from scattered sites around the city (and some of those peripheral sites could in turn be redeveloped for other purposes - or, because the city's renting many of them, free up office space and reduce what the city pays in rent). It'd certainly have lower operating costs. That's why we pay for things like this out of a capital budget, which is separate from the operating budget that pays for schools and cops. We also fund it differently, typically through the issuance of bonds, so that the costs are spread out over an extended period. Ideally, the annual cost savings would be sufficient (or close to sufficient) to pay off the bonds. Now, it would be competing with other items on the capital budget, and that's a debate worth having. The city can't borrow too heavily without driving up its rates. But I don't think we need to choose between education and a new City Hall.
OK, I'll give
It was indeed a tremendous risk. My point isn't that it wasn't worth taking, but rather, that the gamble failed. Instead of an inspiring public facility, we got a dump. That's OK.
OK, I'll go with that - we screwed up.
Moving on, next step - how do we avoid screwing up again? Is it that important for City Hall to make an architectural statement? I'm a form-over-function guy, so I'm biased towards just-build-a-friggin-building, but I'll also give in a little to the design crowd.
The bottom line for me is that I hate to see the waste. I'm a cheap prick and I hate seeing something relatively new get tossed.
Gotta go...
I think the City Hall should
I think the City Hall should have a classic look. Many city halls do, and I think it makes people feel like they are at the right place. "Hey I have to pay my parking ticket, oh look its a city hall, Ill go in there to pay it." Fortunatly I live outside the city by about 10 feet so I dont have to deal with Boston city hall, but honestly the place scares me so much from the outside that I dont think Id ever go in it.
I couldn't disagree more, but ...
The notion that a City (or Town) Hall should follow some sort of template just leads to boring, derivative, uninspiring buildings.
But, you're comment raises a good point. A City Hall should pretty clearly communicate that it is the seat of municipal government. And, it should be accessible (in emotional as well as physical terms).
A building might be initially off-putting, but grow in the hearts of its constituents. (The Seattle Public Library might be considered such a case.) But, that's not the case with Boston City Hall, despite 40 years of opportunity. Those of us who favor the current building have to acknowledge that the building has failed to win over its critics.
That's a pretty damning indictment of a piece of civic architecture.
Another modernist city hall -- that people like!
Toronto City Hall was built around the same time as Boston's. Like ours, it is a striking departure from the 'classical' look. Like ours, it has a large paved plaza next to it.
But Toronto has embraced its modernist City Hall, while the citizens of Boston have largely rejected ours.
Are Toronto's citizens more willing than Boston's to welcome modern architecture? Maybe, but the more likely explanation is that Toronto's building just looks and works better than ours.
Dude
Did you look at the picture? Toronto city hall is not ugly. It's graceful. It probably doesn't even leak. It's not the modern part we don't like about city hall. It's the hideous part.
Bostonians would be as willing to embrace a modern, not ugly city hall as anybody. And I don't think Toronto would like to swap their graceful edifice for our hideous lump.
Oh god that prudential
Oh god that prudential proposal is hideous. It looks like something I would have sketched in my History notebook in the 4th grade, or something from the 1940's movie of the Fountainhead. Yikes. Its like the architect couldn't decide whether he wanted to be Robert Stern or Richard Rogers.
The prudential has grown on me. I love the proportion and definition of the main block as its set off from the bit on top, I like the totally un-fashionable, 60's font of "Prudential", and especially the pattern of the facade. Also its nice that it is topped by something other than a flat or gabled roof.
Remanufacture City Hall?
The Stratton Student Center at MIT was a dysfunctional, concrete choked, butt-ugly monolith like city hall.
In the mid to late 80s, it was pretty much gutted of several tons of concrete, without compromising the structure. It was then redone inside to create a great deal of modern, functional space. I believe it got new and functional HVAC systems at the same time.
Given the enormous quantity of concrete in City Hall, I wonder if it would be possible to remove enough of it to make the building function appropriately. Having seen what can be done to a useless brutalist pile, I think it would pay off to see what could be removed, altered, or reworked and at what price. If anything, it would be money well spent to silence critics if it cannot be altered to become a more functional and useful space.
Reengineer City Hall?
Oh I like that. Especially if it can be done for le$$ and with great energy efficiency.
There's a building engineer (I forget his name and where he does research) who thinks buildings can be made green such that they produce more energy than they use. I wonder if that could be done with a retro-fit like you suggest.
The problem is more people
The problem is more people HATE the way City Hall looks than those who feel it is inefficient. Any large sums of money that go into it will be jeered by the public... and me.
I wonder how many live in
I wonder how many live in Boston?
EXACTLY. We have alot of
EXACTLY. We have alot of suburbanites weighing in on this
City 590,763 Density 12,327/s
City
590,763
Density
12,327/sq mi
Urban
4,313,000
Metro
4,455,217
that's what it means to "be american"
There is absolutely no logical reason a 40 yr old building should be tore down simple because some people, who may, happen to look at it every now and again--on-line or in the newspaper--don't care for it's aesthetics. That's exactly the mindset that has perpetuated this country into a history of tear'em down and build somethin nice and new. Haven't any of you noticed, or been inside a 'new' building? They are garbage, cheap materials, thin walls, no lobbies or welcome areas, and don't forget, zero architectural originality at all. Please someone prove me wrong; is there a single building in Boston that has been built in the last 12 years that doesn't exist in another city(s) as well?? Doubtful, and if so, it's not a memorable building for sure, like City Hall is. People talk about this building, and they always have--albeit for another reason--but the point still stands: City Hall evokes emotion. That's what architecture was about, and no longer is, so tearing down this special building would only result in an inferior, forgettable replacement that doesn't even have proper public transport access--nice. Talk about green eh? Speaking of green, please, you pseudo environmentalists, think logically for just two minutes: Tearing down a building, building a new one, and having every single person who accesses this new building arriving via internal combustion certainly is not green.