Welcoming Roche Brothers to DTX...

...in which we contemplate the turning of yet another tide

Photo 1: Exterior view, down Summer Street toward Washington.

Photo 2: Front view, with outdoor seating in foreground.

Photo 3: Interior on street level (prepared foods).

Photo 4: Lower level, looking back to escalator.

Photo 5: Lower level, main supermarket floor.

Photo 6: Exit to MBTA Concourse at lower level.

Photo 7: On the MBTA Concourse, facing toward entrance.

The Location: The proverbial walkable "Main & Main" of Boston - Downtown Crossing. Specifically at Winter, Summer, and Washington streets, in the Daniel Burnham-designed building that was the flagship store for Filene's for several decades.

The Story: It is here that Roche Brothers, a well-respected, locally-owned, and thoroughly mainstream suburban supermarket chain has decided to enter the urban market with a 25,000 sf store at a highly visible and attention-grabbing location. And make no mistake, this is a departure for Roche Brothers. They were founded in Roslindale (a.k.a, God's Country) in the early 1950s and never ventured any closer to the regional core, opting instead to spread into the western suburbs and eventually north and south of town (even going to the Cape for one of their locations). In the process, they left their original Roslindale Square location (leaving a hole that wasn't plugged until the community rose up to create the Village Market in the late 1990s) and have been headquartered for many years in Wellesley. A glance at their location map (which needs to be updated to show the new store) shows clearly how suburban their footprint is. Until now, the only store they have had within the city limits of Boston is in West Roxbury, the last neighborhood you reach before you hit the suburbs in Dedham. The pictures below the location map tell the story as eloquently as this weblog ever could: The WR store is somewhat walkable/bikeable (I've done both myself), but the full roster is, without exception, much larger and far more auto-served than DTX. In that sense, this is a little bit like the "One of these things is not like the others" segments on Sesame Street. Roche Brothers DTX is the outlier, without doubt.

And so, we come to the thought that this post is intended to provoke. What would bring conventional, suburban Roche Brothers down to the epicenter of the urban core? Clearly, it's the turning tide that is sweeping the area, including the massive residential/retail tower going up next to this location, as well as the Hayward Place building, Millennium Ritz-Carlton, 45 Province, restoration of the Opera House, Paramount, and Modern theaters The list could go on. There's a residential neighborhood taking shape in a part of town that hasn't been that way for more than a century. Now, Roche Brothers are good guys -- particularly to their old hometown of Roslindale/West Roxbury, where they have funded all kinds of community facilities out of a strong sense of corporate citizenship. But they didn't need to come to DTX to demonstrate that. No, they're coming to DTX for the money, because the market is clearly ramping up downtown, and a supermarket here just makes sense. I think it's safe to predict that the sales per square foot at this location are going to be the highest in their portfolio and will more than make up for the learning curve they're going to endure in learning how to efficiently supply and operate a store this "small" at this location. Time will tell, but your humble blogspondent will testify that this location was very, very busy each time I've visited it in the last few days, whether midday or in the evening. I don't see them regretting this decision.

Post Script -- The final photo shows a fairly lifeless exterior to the MBTA concourse entrance/exit. Much more can be done here, possibly including some exterior merchandise or table/chair combinations to create some activity. Vibrancy below ground is part of the equation here, even if only to call attention to the fact that retail activity has returned in a big way to the basement of the Filene's building.

Post Post Script -- It is also clearly time to rethink DTX as a pedestrian zone. The portion shown in Photo 1 works incredibly well, as does the Winter Street block. The rest, not so much. Seems like one solution would be to let motor vehicles back in, all times of the day, BUT at a very low, heavily enforced speed, say 10 or 15 mph to show that shared streets can work.

Blog Post No. 2015-5.

Blog Post No. 2010-2: 45 Province Helps Re-Civilize Its Block

Dignifying a historical echo while losing a bit of local color

Location: 45 Province Street, Boston, MA

Year of Urban Fabric Restoration: 2009

Photos: Taking a walk around the block, starting at the corner of School Street and Province Street, then up School, left into Chapman Place to the rear alley behind the new building, around the corner onto Bosworth Street, down the Province House steps, and finally around the front of the building, stopping for a second at the former site of the Littlest Bar (the small, multi-paned facade at ground level with the red trim).

The Story: Where to start with this patch of Boston? I think I'll start with an excerpt from the treatment that Campbell and Vanderwarker gave to Province Court, the alley on the opposite side of Province Street, in Cityscapes of Boston (pages 158 and 159). [RTUF NOTE: Photo taken from the same vantage point in 2010 has been added as the last photo above. - ML] There, Robert said of the multi-storied garage that occupied this site from the mid-1950s until just a couple of years ago:

This car warehouse is the faceless Metropolitan Garage (1956), which may soon be demolished if a proposed redevelopment goes forward [RTUF NOTE: 45 Province is that ultimate redevelopment, some 17 years after Campbell wrote in 1992.] Regardless of whether it lives or dies, the Metropolitan's lesson is clear. Garages in the city are useful, but they shouldn't be allowed to kill the life of the street by occupying, as this one does, large areas along the sidewalk. Walking past so much dead frontage is like crossing a no man's land. It is empty, risky, and dull. Garages on commercial streets should be tucked out of sight beneath, above, or behind a continuous sidewalk frontage of other uses with interesting windows and doors, the architectural metaphors of human presence. Garages should also be designed with flat floors and enough ceiling room to enable them to be convertible -- like other buildings -- to different uses in the future.

Robert was right in so many different ways about that building. It was ugly, remarkably tall for a building used solely for a garage, and dead to the street in an aggressive, zombie-like way. Enough buildings like this, and you can kill even a city as tightly-knit as Boston. Despite its flat floors, it was not reused. Instead, it was totally demolished to make way for the building seen in the photos that I took this last week.

Even if you're not enitrely comfortable with the height of the new building (I personally am comfortable with the height, being, as I have stated in a prior post, from New York), it is a vast improvement over the former garage and parking lot that used to occupy this location. The residential condominiums rise above ground floor retail, a residential lobby announced by an expansive curving glass canopy, and off-street parking access/egress that is shielded for the most part by strategic landscaping and column placement. Following Robert Campbell's dictum, all of the building's 290+ parking spaces are located below grade beneath the building. One of the retail spaces appears to be reserved for a restaurant, with a side terrace (seen in the third photo, above) that looks like it will be a good place to perch come springtime. I especially like the careful treatment of Chapman Place at the rear of the building (cobblestones and granite curbing along the full length), how the building's main volumes are varied just enough to avoid a canyon effect, and the way the building fills in the entire block. All in all, 45 Province gives the surrounding streets a series of strong edges to work with.

Now for the historic echo and the lost piece of local color. The historic echo is the staircase leading up from the sidewalk on Province Street to the level of Bosworth Street above. This staircase is all that is left of the Province House, a mansion built by a wealthy Boston merchant in the 17th century that was made the official residence of the royal governors of the Massachusetts Province starting in 1716. After the Revolution, the Commonwealth found little use for the building once the seat of state government moved from what is now the Old State House to the Charles Bulfinch-designed (new) State House on Beacon Hill. So, in 1811 the structure was conveyed to the fledgling Massachusetts General Hospital as part of its endowment. After a century of income-generating commercial use for the hospital, the site was sold and the building was then demolished by the new owners in 1922. A plaque commemorating the location's rich history is located to the left of the base of the stairs. I think it fair to say that 45 Province re-civilizes this location -- an interesting concept considering it is located in the historic heart of a historic city, yet still true considering the garage structure it replaced.

We also now have another echo with the vestigial facade of the former Littlest Bar. Michael Levenson's Boston Globe piece lamenting the pub's demise can be read here. In summary, the pub was open for about 60 years, from the end of the Second World War until construction started on 45 Province a few years ago. It truly was the kind of place, as Levenson says, where half a dozen patrons could make it feel crowded. The Littlest did survive in altered form, relocating a few blocks away to Broad Street in a larger, ground-level space that just can't match what it had here. I don't challenge the notion that a strong piece of local color was lost here. But the city gained back a more extensive and functioning urban street frontage, and that has a value of its own.

RTUF Sketch of the Restored Urban Fabric: To say that this building neatly fills in a tear in the urban fabric that was crying out for restoration is an understatement. It does what was needed in this part of town.

RTUF NOTE: This post was modified after its initial publication to correct certain errors, improve readability, and add the photo of Providence Court. -- ML