Targeting New Urban Fabric Restoration, Installment No. 1: Cambridge Street at Blossom Street

View 1: Looking across mid-block, from N. Anderson Street to Blossom Street.

View 2: Looking up Cambridge Street toward Blossom Street.

View 3: Looking back across the corner of Cambridge and Blossom
with the main Mass. General complex in the background.

The Location: 239 Cambridge Street, Boston, MA. 

The Series: We've tended to come along after the fact and write about good moves after they've happened. While we here at RTUF will continue doing so, we also thought it might be interesting to point the camera at places that need restoration and give them some attention before that happens (and maybe even encourage something to happen sooner rather than later). So, herewith, Installment 1 of Targeting New Urban Fabric Restoration...

The Story: The Gulf gas station that used to stand at this site is gone, torn down pretty much immediately after the Mass. General bought the site a couple years ago. It looks like the hospital also pulled out the underground tanks at the same time, tossed on some gravel and leveled it off, so the site is ready for action. Unfortunately, there is no action, at least not yet. Let's hope it's not too long before something does happen here. Moving the gas station off was a good thing for Cambridge Street, especially given its suburban/pumps-out-front configuration, but this is an important corner that is now totally blank (MGH isn't even parking vehicles on the site itself, though they are doing it on the adjacent parcels). And it's not like MGH doesn't know how to take an underperforming street front and make it much better, as this weblog has previously reported in MGH creates an enhanced front door on Cambridge Street and as you can almost see behind the trees at the left in View 3, where a more-than-adequate liner building was constructed sometime in the 1990s (I believe) to hide the garage in the block between N. Anderson and N. Grove. The RTUF sketch below tries to point out the critical piece of corner frontage that needs to be created here too, and I do believe it will be important to go up at least a few stories to be a strong counterpoint to the relatively tall, aesthetically challenged hotel across Blossom.

The RTUF Sketch: The corner, as almost all corners are, is most important, though stretching the the building frontage along Blossom to come closer to or even meet the existing building also makes sense.

Blog Post No. 2011-16: MGH creates an enhanced front door on Cambridge Street...

...using a new museum of medical history and innovation as the catalyst.

Photo 1: Looking from across Cambridge Street.



Photo 2: The gap between the Resident Physicians Building.

Photo 3: Looking toward Charles Circle.

The Location: 38 North Grove Street (at Cambridge Street), Boston's West End.

Year of Urban Fabric Restoration: 2011.

The Story: This one kind of came out of nowhere. Your RTUF correspondent prides himself on keeping up to date on what is being built and where here in the Hub. But I didn't notice this until I happened to be walking up Cambridge Street a couple weeks ago. It's an arresting building, quite different from just about everything up and down the street -- all copper sheathing and glass curtain wall with a triangular overhang at the second level. Not a shred of red brick on it. I reckon that only Mass. General could really get away with doing this here, considering that, you know, Mass. General has been around since this part of Boston turned from a portion of the very wet Back Bay/Charles River estuary into dry land. That goes all the way back to 1823, when the Bulfinch Building (designed by perhaps the old town's most beloved architect) was completed eleven years after The General Hospital corporation was created by a special act of the Massachusetts General Court. "MGH" as it is known around Boston needs practically no introduction almost anywhere. It was, in fact, in the so-called "Ether Dome" that the first surgical operation using general anesthetic (in that case, ether) was conducted in 1846 and popularized rapidly, MGH's chief of surgery, John Collins Warren, declaring to those in attendance that "Gentlemen, this is no humbug." And so, it is fitting that MGH should have a museum of medical history and innovation. And it is also fitting that the building should be a bit splashy at this corner, which is really MGH's front door. The extension of the street wall here is incremental - the old resident physicians' building wasn't that far back from the street. But the shielding of the multi-level garage behind is considerably better than before. Combined with the improvements already noted at this weblog to Charles River Plaza and the Saltonstall Building, we can see that Cambridge Street continues on the urban design upswing. A couple more of the gaps filled in and we'll have a real boulevard to be proud of. Patience and appropriately tempered expectations are truly virtues.

RTUF Sketch of the Restored Urban Fabric: The existing Physicians' Residence building wasn't bad, but it really didn't provide the kind of on-the-street experience that the new building does. And it did precious little to shield the garage structure behind.