UC Berkeley Dissertations
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
UC Berkeley Dissertations Title Insuring the City: The Prudential Center and the Reshaping of Boston Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4b75k2nf Author Rubin, Elihu James Publication Date 2009-09-01 eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California University of California Transportation Center UCTC Dissertation No. 149 Insuring the City: The Prudential Center and the Reshaping of Boston Elihu James Rubin University of California, Berkeley Insuring the City: The Prudential Center and the Reshaping of Boston by Elihu James Rubin B.A. (Yale University) 1999 M.C.P. (University of California, Berkeley) 2004 A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Architecture in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Paul Groth, Chair Professor Richard Walker Professor C. Greig Crysler Fall 2009 Insuring the City: The Prudential Center and the Reshaping of Boston © 2009 by Elihu James Rubin Abstract Insuring the City: The Prudential Center and the Reshaping of Boston by Elihu James Rubin Doctor of Philosophy in Architecture University of California, Berkeley Professor Paul Groth, Chair Insuring the City examines the development of the Prudential Center in Boston as a case study of the organizational, financial, and spatial forces that large insurance companies wielded in shaping the postwar American city. The Prudential Center was one of seven Regional Home Offices (RHOs) planned by Prudential in the 1950s to decentralize its management. What began as an effort to reinvigorate the company’s bureaucratic makeup evolved into a prominent building program and urban planning phenomenon, promoting the economic prospects of each RHO city and reshaping the geography of the business district. Examples from Los Angeles, Houston, and Chicago show each RHO as a calculated real estate investment. The RHOs were also expressions of the insurance company’s self-image as a benevolent force in American cities and social life. Boston—the location of Prudential’s Northeastern Home Office—was, like other American cities, preoccupied with urban obsolescence and erected a political and legal structure to facilitate redevelopment. Navigating its way through these structures, Prudential became an “urban redevelopment corporation” in its own right. The Pru’s i intended site was a rail yard on the outskirts of the central business district, a site that was also pivotal to the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority’s plans to construct an urban extension. Prudential navigated a triangular relationship with the Pike and the Boston Redevelopment Authority to gain recognition—and favored tax status—as a quasi-public actor in the legislatively sanctioned fight against urban blight. The Pru, dedicated in 1965, hastened the expansion of Boston’s central business district into a second midtown area that was a self-contained enclave organized around the car. Together, the Pike and the Pru planned a massive highway interchange in Boston’s Back Bay district. Prudential’s design choices began with the selection of a “businessman” architect, Charles Luckman, and this study examines Luckman’s bureaucratic design process. Though never been loved by architectural critics, the overall plan of the Prudential Center achieved many of its sponsor’s goals and, in several senses, insured Boston’s future. It instilled the city with new financial confidence and thousands of jobs, protected against physical obsolescence, and invested in the city’s public realm. ii Contents Note on Sources......................................................................................................................... vii! Acknowledgments .................................................................................................................... viii! Introduction: Prudential and the American City ......................................................... 1! The Prudential: “The Rock” and the Urban Landscape ............................................................. 3! From the Octopus to the Mighty Pump........................................................................................ 6! Towers and Islands ...................................................................................................................... 9! Urban Renewal, the Expansion of Downtown, and the Pru ...................................................... 13! Plan of the Dissertation and a Statement on Methods............................................................... 17! Chapter One: Prudential’s Urban Policy for the American City.............................. 20! That Mighty Pump, Prudential .................................................................................................. 21! Corporate purification. ............................................................................... 22! Regulation and real estate........................................................................... 25! Insurance and government. ......................................................................... 27 Break the Whole Thing Up........................................................................................................ 31! Home office, branch office. ......................................................................... 32! Dividends of decentralization...................................................................... 34! An urban institution..................................................................................... 38! Location, location, location......................................................................... 39! Modern Prudential style.............................................................................. 41 ! Mid-Town on the Miracle Mile: Prudential in Los Angeles .................................................... 44! Westward, Ho! “The Shift from Center of Concentration.” ...................... 44! Site selection: The Miracle Mile. ............................................................... 46! The building: Light modern........................................................................ 48 ! Access to Paradise: Houston and the Great Southwest ............................................................ 50! The Great Southwest. .................................................................................. 51! The ideal site. .............................................................................................. 53! Office building de-luxe. ............................................................................... 57! A paradise for office girls............................................................................ 61 ! Thinking Outside the Loop in Chicago ..................................................................................... 62! City salvage. ................................................................................................ 62! A lawyer’s dream......................................................................................... 66! Civic duty..................................................................................................... 68! On spec........................................................................................................ 70! iii Corporate policy, urban policy. .................................................................. 73 ! Chapter Two: “I Hate Boston”: Constraints that Confronted Builders in Boston . 77! Greater Boston: The Rise of an Industrial Region ................................................................... 78! The industrial region................................................................................... 79! Imperial Boston. .......................................................................................... 80! Metropolitan growth.................................................................................... 82 ! “Our Fair City”: The Political Geography of Urban Decline................................................... 85! “Curleyism” and the politics of land use.................................................... 87! The fall of the “Rascal King.”..................................................................... 92! Urban decline and the rise of planning....................................................... 96! The politics of urban renewal.................................................................... 100 ! Banned in Boston: Culture, Capital, and Architecture ........................................................... 110! “Where’s Boston?” Architecture and urban identity............................... 112! Tall buildings in Boston. ........................................................................... 114! Height limits. ............................................................................................. 118! Insurance-Deco and the Back Bay district................................................ 121 ! Dirty Streets: Transportation and Modernization................................................................... 123! The crooked and narrow streets of Boston................................................ 125! Congestion versus metropolitan thoroughfares. ....................................... 128! Postwar highway plans. ............................................................................ 133 ! A Fine Old Painting of Character............................................................................................ 136!