Urban Design Tactics

Transformation of Boston’s Midtown Cultural District URBAN DESIGN TACTICS WASHINGTON STREET Prelude: Washington Street Corridor The commercial heart of Boston on lower Washington Street has a rich history of retail and entertainment, dating from the Civil War and reaching its heyday in the 1940’s. 1910s WASHINGTON STREET Filene’s and Jordan Marsh were the anchors of this retail vitality. Just south of these department stores were the Keith, Modern, Gayety, and a dozen other stage theaters, and later larger movie houses such as the Paramount. 1930s 1950s THEATER DISTRICT THEATER DISTRICT Prelude: Washington Street Corridor 1960-1980s Combat Zone Days: Post War sub- Retailers struggled in this environment; the city urbanization drained the city’s commercial en- made several somewhat successful attempts to ergy, and a shift in entertainment from theater clean up the district through major urban renewal and cinema to television precipitated the de- projects such as pedestrian street malls and sever- cline of a vibrant Theater District into the taw- al above grade-parking garages to facilitate com- dry and notorious “Combat Zone” of crime, muters for shopping. “Downtown Crossing” was a prostitution, and X-rated cinemas. re-branding effort to stimulate investment and alter the shopping experience using the then-popular “street mall”, closing off traffic around the Filene’s block. 1970 From Traditional Block to Super Block Beginning in the mid-1970’s, several very large FAILED URBAN RENEWAL LAFAYETTE PLACE development proposals were made. Consisting With Urban Renewal in the 1960’s, streets were re- Lafayette Place, positioned adjacent to Jordan of new and larger retail and commercial office positioned or widened to facilitate downtown traf- Marsh and absorbing several blocks, became a space, these proposals dramatically altered fic for the suburbanites being lured back for shop- mega-project with over 300,000 sf of retail, restau- Washington Street. ping and entertainment. But these investments fell rants, and a 500 room hotel. The complex basically short in execution, and created only urban “stasis”: turned its back on the street, focusing the main the Combat Zone was essentially contained in the retail event on the central round dining courtyard – “hinge” between the remaining Theater District and a circular variation on the classic linear suburban the traditional Commercial District. Pedestrian ac- mall. Minimal display windows dotted the perimeter tivity was mostly concentrated in the Downtown and a submerged hotel port-cochere, coupled with Crossing area, which remained vital due to office the loss of street facades due to the super-block, commuters and the confluence of subway connec- drained vital pedestrian activity from the street. tions. 1985 Midtown Cultural District The city was looking for ways to re-build the activity of this district, and its first major Planned Devel- opment Area was for what became known as the Midtown Cultural District. Significant zoning enve- lopes were created by the city that were intended to lure developers to the area (Article 38, Boston Zoning Code). Certain protections were created to protect the environment of major open spaces such as the Com- mon, Old Burial Ground, and some of the historic landmarks, mostly north of the District. Building massing emphasized urban street wall continuity, active and visible storefronts, setbacks for daylight to the street, and a range of permitted uses including multi-family residential. MAP 1A - MIDTOWN CULTURAL DISTRICT From Super Block to Mega Block During the 1980’s a series of major proposals on Washington Street sought to expand on the 1990 retail and commercial investment already made at Lafayette Place, which began to fail from the day it opened its doors. Essentially, the city endorsed a “doubling-down” on the intensified retail/commercial model for urban revitalization. The Recession of 1991-92 permanently arrested both projects. The anticipated mix of retail, ho- tels, and commercial office was impossible to finance during the early 1990’s recovery. Empty lots remained as nagging reminders of a still stalled Washington Street revitalization. 1987: BOSTON CROSSING 1988: COMMONWEALTH CENTER The Boston Crossing proj- Almost concurrent with Boston Crossing, on the ect included replacing Jor- west side of Washington Street at Avery, the Com- dan Marsh with a Blooming- monwealth Center was a proposed 1.7 million SF dale’s department store and project with office, hotel, and retail. The adjacent an office tower at Summer Paramount Theater would be re-furbished as part Street, and another 30-sto- of a new entertainment program with additional ry office tower on the now movie theaters. The internalized shopping experi- empty site abutting Hayward ence included a skylit atrium connecting Washing- Place. Bracketing the Swiss ton Street to Tremont and The Common. A hotel Hotel at Lafayette Place, the would flank the atrium, and office towers would 7.4 acre complex proposed straddle both sides of Avery Street. a continuous façade of “big- box” retail on the east side of Washington, punctuated with office lobbies only at the street corners. Refine the Urban Design Strategy Two decades of incomplete or failed renewal in the Midtown Cultural District was not just the result of several recessions. It can be traced to a failure to see the paradigm shift occurring in mixed use development. Internalized functions (the classic mall atrium), coupled with a mono-culture of retail/commercial in direct competition with the already es- tablished Financial District and the Back Bay, could not on its own create a vibrant, 24-hour neighborhood. Residential development, of sufficient scale, was needed to compliment these uses to invest the street with pedestrian activity during non- store hours. And the mixed-use building needed to externalize the activity, moving residents and visitors in and out of street lobbies to get to different parts of the building. CHANGE THE MIX: THE RESIDENTIAL HYBRID BUILDING The Residential Hybrid Building organizes a dense mix of heterogeneous functions into a single entity which, if properly organized, positively impacts the vitality of the street. The cycle of who comes and goes, and where they enter along the street, during the course of a day or week can invigorate the pedestrian experience. When carefully calibrated in size and occupancy, the Hybrid Building acts like an Urban Mega-vita- min, with the power to stimulate the neighborhood with new smaller scale peripheral development. Tactical Urban Design Specific tactical design “operations” are em- ployed to organize the building massing, re- enforce street activity, and locate the high-rise portions of the program in a meaningful civic design solution. This required careful reading of the existing context and interpretation of the cues latent in the existing mix of building types and scales. READING THE CONTEXT: THE SYNCOPATED STREET WALL From State Street south to Boylston, Washing- ton Street is characterized by a syncopated street rhythm of varying cornice lines and street fronts. Most structures are 45-60’ tall. There is another datum at about 100-130’ (600 Washington and Filenes), and then a few in the 300’ range from the late 1960’s and early 70’s (Tremont on the Com- mon and Swiss Hotel). The west face of Washington retained this irregular rhythm of narrow frontages, some with deep up- per court recesses. The east side is notable for extended regularity of 90’ street wall from Sum- mer (Macy’s) to Hayward Place (Lafayette Place), bracketed by the 130’ high buildings at the remote corners of the Avery block and the Jeweler’s Ex- change at Bromfield St. Millennium Place Urban Design Tactics The Boston Crossing project implied a neo- classical solution at the intersection of the Av- ery and Washington, but was rendered ambig- uous by the adjacent atrium. The street wall for SOUTH MEETING the most part was retained as it bended south- HOUSE ward. Continuity and polite setbacks – imbed- ded in the zoning – softened the “tower on po- dium” solution. URBAN PIVOT POINT Millennium Place resolved the intersection by cre- ating a pavilion (AKA “The Basket”) to act as a pivot point at the south end of the straight street corridor, the other end defined by the steeple of the Old South Meeting house. This irregular semi-rotunda is a 90’ glass enclosed pavilion facing out to the street. Intended initially as one of two cinema en- tries, it houses a restaurant above, retail on the ground floor, and a fitness studio in the middle. MILLENNIUM PLACE SITE Millennium Place: Urban Design Tactics THE ARTICULATED STREET WALL THE AVERY STREET GATEWAY The irregular site of Millennium Place touches on At the pedestrian scale, cornice gestures and a re- three of four corners of the block. The charac- clad glass “gatehouse” at 172 Tremont were de- ter and history of these corners and the abutting vised to frame the entry from The Common into Av- neighborhoods are sufficiently separated that each ery. Street paving and tree planting further defined define a precinct. either end of Avery Street. The street wall, combined with its architectur- al components (materials, openings, expression lines), are shaped to articulate these unique expe- riences: the corner at Boylston marking the “gate” into the Cultural District from the edge of China- town; the corners of the mid-rise portion of both North and South block framing the linear space of Avery Street. ANIMATING – INDUCING PEDESTRIAN THEATER STREET ACTIVITY The street is the primary conduit of pub- lic experience of urban space. Pedestrians PARKING and vehicles compete in a complex ballet of movement: congestion, in moderation, is HOTEL a good thing to vitalize the neighborhood, BAR socially and economically. Multiple points of HOTEL entry, with varying uses, are created around LOBBY the perimeter of the site.

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