Blog Post No. 2011-17: What do you think it would take...

...to appropriately cap off Boston's Cathedral of the Holy Cross?

Photo 1: Front facade of the cathedral. 

Photo 2: Close view of the lower front facade tower.

Photo 3: A side view of the front facade,
showing the low caps on the towers.

Photo 4: The north side facade at the transept.

Photo 5: View looking south along Washington Street,
with Cathedral High School gym just in front of cathedral.

Photo 6: Plaque on the front facade of the cathedral,
referencing the importance of the building to
newly-arrived Irish immigrants in the mid 19th century.

The Comment: As you can see from the photos, the Cathedral of the Holy Cross, although it's been open and in operation since 1875, was never quite "completed" to the design of P.C. Keeley, despite the plaque's statement to the contrary. It is very obviously missing the spires that should rise from the two towers on either side of the front facade. And so, RTUF's question today is as indicated above: What would it take to appropriately cap off those towers? And I mean that question both architecturally and practically. What should they look like -- traditional Gothic spires in the spirit of the original design (shown directly below, and, at least according to the accompanying account, planned to reach 200 and 300 feet in height, respectively), or something more modern? And practically, how would the archdiocese, no longer flush with cash or the level of influence and good will it used to enjoy in Boston, pull it off in the first place?

Source: Boston Illustrated, 1881.

Now, this question occurs to me because I've spent several hours last Saturday and today attending mass at the Cathedral. I have done this not because the Cathedral is convenient to our house in Roslindale or because I'm looking for a new parish. Rather, my son's choir (based from the Boston Archdiocesan Choir School at St. Paul's Church in Cambridge) has sung at masses there the last two weekends. [Regular readers may recall that I blogged about the very flexible courtyard space at St. Paul's church earlier this year in Post No. 2011-2.]

So, I've spent more time there in the last 8 days than I've spent there in the last 14 years of living in the Boston area. Even as a pretty diligent, church-going Catholic, I'm not surprised. The Cathedral, almost since the day of its completion, appears to have occupied something of a disfavored place in the life and self-concept of the Boston archdiocese. This seems partly the result of its location in the South End, which was eclipsed as the most fashionable residential neighborhood in the city shortly after its completion when the filling and construction of the Back Bay got underway in the 1860s. It also seems partly the result of the leadership of the archdiocese's decision to affirmatively achieve the disconnect by decamping for Lake Street on the Brighton-Newton border starting in the 1880s. Under Archbishop Williams, the chancery (the central administrative offices), the archdiocesan seminary, and the archbishop's residence were all located out on the former Stanwood Estate by the turn of the last century, several miles from the place where worship was supposed to be centered. When Boston College, the region's most important Catholic higher educational institution, moved from its former location on Harrison Avenue (also in the South End and not far from the Cathedral) to an assemblage across Commonwealth Avenue from the archdiocese's new compound in the first decade of the 20th century, the relocation of Catholic Boston's power and attention was complete. I'd be curious to know if there is another example anywhere in the Catholic Church -- worldwide -- where the cathedral was so completely abandoned and cut off from the leadership of the diocese. The only thing the leadership appears to have left behind was Cathedral High School (the school gym is seen in Photo 5). And, then in the early 20th century, injury was added to insult as the elevated Orange Line was built down Washington Street, resulting in what Robert Campbell called "A Cathedral Trapped Behind an Iron Fence" in Cityscapes of Boston. So much, then, for the building that was supposed to be the main marker for the fully-arrived Catholic community in Boston.

But the tides against which the Cathedral swam for many decades seem to be receding, at least in some directions. As Campbell noted in Cityscapes, the elevated Orange Line was torn down in the 1980s when the subway was relocated to a new alignment in the Southwest Corridor. The South End has become a far more fashionable and desired urban neighborhood in the last several decades. Washington Street itself has substantially recoverd, as new construction to the north of the Cathedral has filled in major gaps in the urban fabric and the MBTA, City of Boston, and the Commonwealth recently collaborated on a reconstruction of the thoroughfare that improved the streetscape and provided for reserved bus lanes for the Silver Line's southern segment (they're the red-painted lanes seen in Photo 5). The archdiocese itself has undergone a major transformation as a result of several trends over the last half century, including, most significantly, the twin traumas of parish closings/consolidations and the clergy abuse scandal that directly led to selling off most of the old Lake Street complex to Boston College as a way to shore up the archdiocese's finances. The current archbishop and cardinal, Sean O'Malley, now resides next to the Cathedral (a move your faithful correspondent heartily applauds), while the chancery has been moved to suburban office space in Braintree and the seminary remains in Brighton.

Accordingly, a new day has, in many ways, arrived in the archdiocese and we are all -- leadership, clergy, laity -- feeling our way through it. It seems, to at least this observer, that one tremendously important symbol of really starting a new era might be to complete unfinished business with what remains, at least spiritually, the most important building in the archdiocese's built heritage. Why not give the old edifice something new to make it really stand out? Why not figure out a way to have the towers (however conceived) finally reach into the sky the way they were meant? Why not announce that the archdiocese really and truly is back, in and of the City?

Editor's Note: This post has been edited for flow and to correct spelling and punctuation since its original posting. -- MJL

Blog Post No. 2011-1: 131 Dartmouth helps smooth the transition of the High Spine into the South End...

...and gives us an opportunity to consider again how Boston dodged a potentially very damaging freeway bullet

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Photos: Quite frankly, RTUF is having trouble manipulating photos on our "new" apple computer, and so unable to get the order quite right with the pix, but (1) view across Dartmouth Street with Back Bay Station to the left; (2) looking from Clarendon Street; (2a) context shot of Back Bay Station from Clarendon Street; (3) closer-in view of the office entrance; (4) another view across Dartmouth Street, but this time showing how the building steps down toward the South End; (4a) decent view of the lower volume of the building and how well it reads as a South End row; and (5) another view of the office entrance.

Location: 131 Dartmouth Street, Boston (South End), MA.

Year of Urban Fabric Restoration: 2002

The Story: Before we get down to business, hope everyone out there in RTUF Nation had safe and happy holidays and is off to a great start for 2011! Given the lack of posts, you can guess that December was rather hectic. But now we're back and ready for another year of fun as we scan Boston's built landscape for signs of improvement.

Today, whether because of the colossal expense, the sheer engineering feat its construction represented, or the tragic death of Milena DelValle in 2006 when a chunk of the tunnel ceiling fell onto the car she was traveling in, most everyone is familiar with the Central Artery/Third Tunnel project, better known as the "Big Dig." That mega-project submerged the former elevated Central Artery highway that separated downtown Boston from the North End and the waterfront and built a new, third tunnel under Boston Harbor from South Boston to Logan Airport. As a general rule, most are glad that one of the worst violations of the city's urban fabric has been repaired despite the costs. But few today likely remember that the Central Artery was originally intended to be only one link in a network of inner-city highway links including the Inner Belt, the Northwest Expressway, the Northeast Expressway, and, most importantly for this entry's discussion, the Southwest Expressway.

As described at the foregoing link, the route for that expressway evolved over time, but it was ultimately planned to run north-northeast from where I-95 currently ends in Canton through the Boston neighborhoods of Hyde Park, Roslindale, Jamaica Plain, Roxbury, and the South End roughly along the alignment of the then-New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad mainline to link up with the Inner Belt/I-695, which was intended to run in a semi-circle through Somerville, Cambridge, Brookline, and the South End, connecting to I-93 at both ends. Plans for the Southwest Expressway and essentially the entire inner-city network were abandoned during the Freeway Revolt of the late 1960s/early 1970s. And let me tell you, as a resident of Roslindale: that decision is largely responsible for Roslindale's "Can't get there from here" sense of being largely and happily off the map, at least as far as the regional highway system goes. Had the Southwest Expressway been built, we might have had better auto access but the blocks adjoining the freeway on either side would have been permanently blighted. Roslindale Square's excellent overall transit service -- commuter rail station in the middle and multiple bus lines converging on the one-mile section of Washington Street leading north to Forest Hills station on the Orange Line -- more than compensates for the lack of highway access. It's a feature, not a bug, in my view.

Now, by the time the plug on new limited access highways inside Route 128 was finally pulled, significant, but not complete, land takings and even clearance had occurred along substantial portions of the proposed route, especially in Jamaica Plain and Roxbury. The funds originally designated for the Southwest Expressway were then re-deployed to relocate the southern end of the MBTA's Orange Line from its elevated route down Washington Street to a new alignment within a "Southwest Corridor" linear park stretching from Forest Hills into Back Bay Station. And so, a new Back Bay Station was conceived as part of the project and opened in 1987. Designed by Kallman, McKinney and Wood, the station recalls the prior stations on the location with its multiple archways and central arched space, but has plenty of exposed structural concrete representing the late 20th century and the wave of investment in Boston's public transit system that swept across the region in the 1970s and 1980s in the wake of the rejection of interstate largesse.

Land takings and clearance around Back Bay Station were extensive, both for the expressway and as part of the South End Urban Renewal Plan pursued by the Boston Redevelopment Authority. Across Dartmouth Street, citizen activism in the late 1960s over cleared but unused land resulted in the Tent City protest and ultimately the Tent City mixed-use/mixed-income project. The land directly abutting the station between Dartmouth and Clarendon Streets to the south/east was never part of the eminent domain takings, but the former row buildings and 3-story parking garage were ultimately cleared and then took until 2002 to finally fill back in with (and now we get to it) the 131 Dartmouth Street building featured in the photos. The building, designed by Somerville's Arrowstreet Architects, does about as good a job as can be imagined in fitting a new, 12-story mixed-used structure onto a fairly constrained site. The architecture is informed by the South End and its historic brick row houses, but it never devolves into kitschiness and presents extremely well at the street level. And of course, it's the very edge of the High Spine (see Blog Post No. 2009-8), so the medium height the building and the way it steps down toward the lower rise South End helps the transition from the higher parts of the spine a couple of blocks to the north.

RTUF Sketch of the Restored Urban Fabric: You can see just how well the building fills out its site in this sketch. It really does exactly what it needs to do in as closely knit an area as the South End.

Blog Post No. 2010-21: Seizing the presently available opportunity to continue the campaign to bring the Pru out to meet its neighbors...

...in the Back Bay and South End

A rendering of Avalon Exeter viewed from Boylston Street over the Lord & Taylor building (credit: Boston Properties, Elkus Manfredi).

Ted Siefer, a Boston Globe correspondent who's been writing recently on a wide variety of home and real estate-related topics as well as producing content for The Phoenix and WBUR, did a fine job in Saturday's paper in describing how a current development proposal does both in "Apartment building ready to rise". AvalonBay Communities is predicting construction start on Avalon Exeter, a 28-story rental apartment building located on the Prudential Center complex (MAP) that straddles the border of the Back Bay and the South End, in the spring of next year.

Multifamily development, especially in a rental market like Boston's with its high built-in demand, high rental rates, and low vacancy with little new product coming online, is the current conventional wisdom's financing fair-haired child. Almost nothing else is moving forward right now in a meaningful way -- certainly not general office given the employment situation, not ownership residential given the continued inability of that market to find a positive direction several years into the subprimte/foreclosure meltdown, and also not retail development given continued softness in the consumer economy (though there are some isolated bright spots). No, ladies and gentlemen, the smart money right now and for the foreseeable future is on multifamily rental and that counts as our "presently available opportunity" for today's post.

Which brings us to the "bring the Pru out to meet the neighbors" part of the post. That's the way the design of the new tower and, equally as importantly, its location continues the multi-year effort by the owner of the overall Prudentail Center complex -- Boston Properties -- to fill in the exterior edges of the massive complex and make it act more like a piece of the urban fabric in this critical urban location, rather than a sealed-off enclave behind vacuous and little used open spaces. This trend was cited in one of the first posts on this blog -- No. 2009-3 just over a year ago -- about the Mandarin Oriental building on Boylston Street and how it had quite elegantly filled in a gap in the Pru's exterior on Boylston Street. Boston Properties has been doing that all over the place -- with the curving Belvedere residential building on that street's frontage, the office tower at 111 Huntington Avenue (famous for its crown, reportedly the brain-child of the Mayor himself), new one- and two-story connections along Huntington Avenue itself with a relocated and upgraded Shaw's supermarket, and a more open design to the Lord & Taylor store on Boylston Street.

All of these changes have made the Pru a far better neighbor than it has ever been, and Boston Properties has a plan approved already to fill in the last big gap on Boylston with an office building dubbed "888 Boylston." The office market being what it is, it may be some time before that building moves forward. But, as noted above, the multifamily rental market is still going well and AvalonBay, having taken over ownership and management of the pricey but frankly urban design-deficient residential towers at the Pru, is now finally ready to break ground on a residential building that will fill in the exterior gap on the east, along Exeter Street between Huntington and Boylston. The rendering in the article doesn't have much detail but it does seem to show the new building creating a strong street edge and ground-level uses on Exeter. And below, some context...

In order: 888 Boylston Street (the proposed office tower further up Boylston (credit: Boston Properties)), 1960s-vintage postcard showing the under-construction Prudential as object building resting on its low-slung podium (credit unavailable), the residential towers on the eastern end of the site as originally built (note the surrounding plaza space (credit: Boston Properties)), the curving Belvidere residential building that encloses the Belvedere-Dalton Street frontage (credit noted).