Blog Post No. 2012-13: An interesting way to shake up the "figure-ground" view of cities

My friend and R&C colleague Dwight Merriam shot me the following link last week and I finally took a look this morning:

Odd things happen when you chop up cities and stack them sideways

It takes you to "Krulwich Wonders - an NPR Sciencey Blog," a weblog maintained by Robert Krulwich on NPR's website. Krulwich's post is a comment on the work of Armelle Caron, a French artist who has performed an act of desconstruction on a total of 6 major cities (the 2 not shown in Krulwich's post are Le Havre and Montpellier). 

The starting points here are known as "figure-ground" views of the described cities over a set area in which the buildings are solid, colored shapes and everything else is white space. I must confess that I have always enjoyed the immediate, intuitive information conveyed by figure-ground graphics, so much so that when my kids were younger and we found ourselves at the beach, I wouldn't build sand-castles but instead lay out rock and shell versions of figure-grounds (Roslindale Square was very often the subject). Figure-grounds convey, perhaps better than any other method, the way in which buildings and how they are arranged in relation to each other create or fail to create meaningful and satisfying places, and they're especially good for comparing cities:



New York Figure-Ground (Credit: Armelle Caron)



New York deconstructed (Credit: Armelle Caron) 



Istanbul Figure-Ground (Credit: Armelle Caron)



Istanbul deconstructed (Credit: Armelle Caron)

 The deconstructed version is also interesting, and the method of laying out the separated pieces is obviously an art, not a science. Interesntigly, Krulwich's vote for most interesting deconstruction goes to Istanbul, and he indicates almost-disappointment with New York. I must say I'm not entirely with Krulwich that the city of my birth comes off that badly, especially considering that if the area shown were dropped another half mile or so, it would show more variety since it would take in all of Lower Manhattan.

Blog Post No. 2012-12: Making the Hynes behave on Boylston Street

Photo 1: Looking east on Boylston Street, Hynes in the midground, and
the Hancock Tower in the far background.



Photo 2: Looking diagonally across Boylston Street, at Hynes' NW corner
and The Capital Grille.



Photo 3: towne restaurant, at the NE corner of the Hynes
Convention Center (sorry for the delivery trucks).

Photo 4: The eastward facing entrance of towne, shot from the
sidewalk in front of the courtyard adjacent.

Photo 5: The courtyard adjacent, with towne's outdoor seating.

The Location: 900 Boylston Street, Boston (Back Bay), MA.

Year of Urban Fabric Restoration: 2010.

The Story: We have spent no insignificant amount of time and digital ink here at RTUF talking about the many changes, large and small, that have been made over the last decade at the Prudential Center (of which the Hynes Convention Center is not technically a part, though it is directly adjacent), including in both Blog Post No. 2009-3: The Mandarin Oriental Hotel (discussing the Mandarin's success in replacing what had been a particularly lifeless cluster of auto access drives along Boylston Street between Essex and Fairfield Streets), and Blog Post No. 2010-21: Seizing the presently available opportunity to continue the campaign to bring the Pru out to meet its neighbors... (highlighting a then-proposed residential rental tower that filled in a major gap along Essex Street, and also pointing to the still-proposed 888 Boylston Street tower that would fill in the last plaza space next to towne as well as several other changes around the complex's perimeter such as 111 Huntington, the Belvidere residences, and the two-story section along Huntington to which Shaw's supermarket was moved). It has been an impressive string of improvements, and one to which Cityscapes of Boston itself pointed with anticipation even as far back as 1992. After lamenting the "wasteland of grim towers and empty plazas" by which "Boston's Prudential Center blights everything around it," Robert Campbell expressed hope at the then-new ownership's plans for "filling the worst of its dead plazas with new shops and offices," concluding that "[i]f all goes well, the Pru may some day be a revitalizing agent for the very street frontage it now kills." (pp. 208-209)

That day can now be said to have fully arrived, two decades on. So much so that even publicly-owned buildings are getting in on the act. Your RTUF correspondent will stipulate that we are looking in this case at a fairly subtle, kind of small bore change to the formerly long, blank Boylston Street frontage of the Hynes Convention Center. For our non-Boston readers, the Hynes is the erstwhile main convention center for the Boston region that ultimately became too small and was replaced by the massive Boston Convention and Exposition Center (or "BCEC") out in what is now the Innovation District in South Boston. (Of course, there's already a proposal floating to expand the BCEC beyond its current footprint because it is already in danger of becoming too small itself, less than 10 years after it was completed (!), but I digress...)

Now, to return to the Hynes and the subject of this blog post. The convention center authority has retained the Hynes and kept it operating as a venue for smaller conventions and meetings that don't compete with the BCEC. At least one source from around the time of towne's opening ("towne makes Hynes tastier") indicated that the authority's impetus for bringing in both towne and The Capital Grille was to improve dining options for visitors/convention-goers. I also suspect that part of the discussion around keeping the Hynes open after the BCEC came online might have included running some numbers and trying to figure out a way to enhnace non-event revenue, including from such things as then underutilized space along the Boylston Street frontage. Whatever the reason, the insertion of both restaurants within the existing footprint of the building at its two corners was a very good move. No, not earthshattering, but a smart decision and one recognizing a couple of key imperatives in creating a workable urban fabric: first, avoid long blank walls along important street frontages, whatever is going on behind them, and second, pay special attention to corners. The result is that this stretch of Boylston now has activity on both sides of the street, something that almost has never been the case (recall that before the Pru was built, there were extensive railroad yards all the way from Mass. Ave. to Dartmouth St.), but which Campbell rightly pointed out in Cityscapes (at p. 208) is critical for a successful commercial street, though being located opposite the Hynes was never quite as bad as being located opposite the un-reconstructed Pru's plazas. Note also that both restaurants have extensive outdoor seating, which used to be dismissed in Boston as simply incompatible with a region that has as long a winter season as we typically do, but is now recognized as a highly desirable amenity for any urban eatery.

RTUF Sketch of the Restored Urban Fabric:

Blog Post No. 2012-11: No, we didn't just imagine it...

...Mitt Romney really was a strong proponent of Smart Growth when he was Governor of Massachusetts

For what it's worth, your faithful correspondent is a praiser of vibrant urban places at least in part for the same reason I'm a registered Democrat - I was born and raised that way. I also happen to truly love cities and hold progressive political opinions, so it's not as if I categorize myself unwillingly. In other words, at some level, we simply are who we are (for reasons both in our control and outside of it) and we need to admit it.

How, then, are we to understand the whiplash-inducing spectacle of position-reversal that is the campaign of Mitt Romney as the Republican Party's nominee for president of the United States? Because it's not just his positions on things like health care that have swung so far to the right as he has pursued the presidency that you begin to wonder if the present campaign is really more like a schizophrenic battle of present-day Romney against Romney circa 2002-2006 than it is Romney against the incumbent. No, indeed. Romney also very warmly embraced Smart Growth, which is now so totally anathema to his party that it has been associated with the unholy trinity of the U.N., black helicopters and one-world-ism. This was true during both the 2002 gubernatorial campaign and Romney's administration, and well do I remember it. And thankfully my recollection is confirmed by an insightful piece - "Romney, once an anti-sprawl crusader, created model for Obama 'Smart Growth' program" - posted earlier this year by Lisa Hymas at Grist.org. Go check it out. As the quotes from Doug Foy and Anthony Flint suggest, Romney's support for Smart Growth really did have a kind of "Is he for real?" quality to them. Nothing, at least nothing publicly known, that he had done or said before the 2002 campaign suggested that Smart Growth was a major issue for him. But he and his administration really made some real progress on it while he was governor. And, given his silence on the issue, one can now only assume that he shares his party's revulsion for the entire notion, let alone its implementation as policy. The whole thing would be amusing if we didn't actually need Smart Growth (or whatever alternative name people would like to apply to it, whether that's sustainable development, traditional neighborhoods, walkable neighborhoods, or any combination of those terms and others) so desperately for a whole host of reasons.

RTUF Note: This post was updated since its original posting to improve readability and correct certain phrasing. - MJL

Blog Post No. 2012-10: Sacred Heart Parish takes care of its physical assets...

...both sacred and profane

The Photos:

Photo 1: One of the church's interior stations of the cross, recently restored.

Photo 2: The restored exterior niche statue.

Photo 3: The repaired slate roof.

Photo 4: The re-sided rectory.

The Location: 169 Cummins Highway, Roslindale, MA (MAP)

Years of Urban Fabric Restoration: 2007-2012.

The Story: We're in Roslindale again, this time at Sacred Heart Parish. For those keeping score at home, we are also back to restorative actions similar to the May entry about Community Boating down on the Charles River. In this case, Sacred Heart has undertaken a series of repairs and renovations over a five-year period under the heading of "Project Slate." [You can see the pre-existing general exterior condition of the church and rectory in the google streetview available at the map link above.] The fundraising campaign kicked off in 2006, and in relatively short order, the necessary funds were gathered. Construction then began, first with, you guessed it, a new slate roof over the entire church building, followed by repainting of the interior of the upper church (like most urban Catholic churches built in the massive wave of European immigration of the second half of the 19th century, the church has both an upper church and a lower church which in an earlier era held multiple Sunday masses each), repointing the exterior brick work and the main exterior stairway, and re-siding of the rectory. After some additional fundraising and patience, the stations of the cross were also completely restored (after two were initially restored early on).

One relatively unheralded change was the removal of the old, badly-stained and unfortunate-looking plexiglass that covered the niche statue of Jesus with the Sacred Heart. As you can see in photo 2, that statue is now back in the open air with the heart itself painted red as is most common. Why and when the statue was encased in plexiglass is not known to your correspondent. But I will say that the removal of the plexiglass is one of those relatively small but highly symbolic events that cumulatively add up to an urban fabric that is functioning and telling its participants that there is confidence in the durability and significance of its various components. The restoration of the stations of the cross is another such action that means more than simply putting gold leaf where it belongs (though as you can see from Photo 1, it's an impressive piece of work). Again, I don't know why and when these stations were painted entirely white (which was their state just before the recent restoration). Yet they were, a poor decision whose reversal required raising relatively substantial funds just to have stations that express the artist's original intent. It's a cliche, I admit, but the cumulative urban fabric effect of Project Slate is greater than the sum of its parts.

Blog Post No. 2012-9: Arboretum Place establishes a strong northern gateway for Roslindale...

... and begins the evolution of Forest Hills

Photo 1: Arboretum Place from the south.

Photo 2: Looking across Washington Street at the southern building corner.

Photo 3: Looking across Washington Street at the northern end of the building's facade.

Photo 4: Looking south on Washington Street.

Photo 5: The finished product.

The Location: Arboretum Place (Washington Street), Jamaica Plain, MA (MAP).

Year of Urban Fabric Restoration: 2012.

The Story: Or is this more accurately described as the southern gateway to Jamaica Plain? I must say that I've always thought of this particular location as being part of God's Country (a.k.a, Roslindale), but I stand corrected. Regardless, this is a very good piece of work by everyone involved, running from the City of Boston (and its Forest Hills Planning Initiative) and the MBTA (owners of these sliver parcels along what was to have been the Southwest Expressway) to the neighboring community and the developer, WCI Realty, and their design team, including extremely local player Vozzella Design Group (whose office is literally two doors down from here). The building will be oriented tightly toward the street, with retail uses on the entire first floor and parking located on either side instead of between the building on the front lot line. It's going to be a strong presence at this location.

I will also confess both (1) that I'm jumping the gun slightly (in that the project is not yet complete), and (2) that this isn't technically about "restoring" the urban fabric here because, truth be told (at least according to our friend George Bromley and his series of atlases from the late 19th and early 20th centuries), this is the first time a building has been placed on this particular location. As you can see from Bromley's 1884 and 1923 maps, this space between intersecting railroad lines (today's Amtrak/MBTA mainline on the east and the MBTA's Needham Heights branch on the west) has previously lain unused despite development nearby. The anchor tenant for the retail is going to be Harvest Co-op, a natural and organic foods grocer that has a location not far away on South Street in JP as well as in Cambridge. The space here will be a big step up for them (according to the Jamaica Plain Gazette, at about 8700 square feet, it's double the size of the current JP store) and you may well find your RTUF correspondent shopping there from time to time once it opens.

Forest Hills generally appears on the verge of rapid evolution from a kind of afterthought at the edge of two neighborhoods lying underneath the Casey Overpass to a destination in its own right. Once completed and occupied, Arboretum Place should play a major role in moving this gateway to the southwestern section of Boston forward.

The Not-RTUF Sketch: The developers of Arboretum Place have a definitive plan view of the development on their website (the building profiled here is the larger one in the center of the sketch), so no need for RTUF to reinvent this particular wheel:

Polishing a jewel in Boston's treasury...

...as Community Boating renovates and restores its front and back doors

Post No.: 2012-08.

The Photos:

Photo 1: Looking west from the footbridge near the Longfellow Bridge, CBI is in the middle-ground.

Photo 2: CBI's front door on the Esplanade, restored and repainted.

Photo 3: The rate schedule, now indicating a sliding scale of $1-$200 for 10-18 year olds.

Photo 4: If it's on the Esplanade, it's likely Mrs. Storrow had something to do with originally funding it, and CBI is no exception.

Photo 5: The fully replaced and improved dock space.

Photo 6: The new Dock House.

The Location: Community Boating, Inc., on the Charles River Esplanade. MAP.

Year of Urban Fabric Restoration: 2011.

The Story: It was a hot one yesterday in Boston, and your correspondent was lucky that it was his turn to take RTUF's Next Generation down to sailing class on the Esplanade. [The trip itself was somewhat poignant -- we took the Needham Line into town on the 6th to last Saturday on which weekend service will be offered for the foreseeable future. Service cuts needed to balance the MBTA's FY2013 budget will give this particular urban amenity the old heave-ho as of June 30th.] As I said, it was hot, but the breeze was blowing down on the Upper Basin as the red flag in the final photo attests. Being there yesterday morning reminded me that CBI recently undertook a really well-done renovation and restoration funded by a virtual cast of thousand including the Commonwealth (and the current landlord, the Department of Conservation and Recreation), The Esplanade Association, The Solomon Fund, the Mugar Foundation, and CBI itself. To this non-sailor's eye, it looks like they did what they needed to replace and greatly improve the dock space, which had been in pretty tough shape, built new structures (not only the dock house but also a new shed for storing windsurfing sails and and other equipment), and did some curating of the front entrance (new doors, restoration and repainting of the grillwork with the sailboat motif). Nothing earthshattering, but not inconsequential either, and something worth pointing out as one of those incremental, small changes that add up to vital signals that the participants in the urban ensemble that makes up any city or town have cared enough to put resources behind their physical plant in a way that furthers their mission and says they are here to stay.

And CBI isn't just any player in Boston's ongoing urban production. Its mission is really important, enough that the title of this blog post is not hyperbole. CBI's mission since its founding in 1946 has been the "advancement of sailing for all," originally by offering classes and access to the water for all kids between 10-18 for $1 per year (now based on a sliding scale up to $200 per year based on family income, but a great value at a huge discount regardless). With the new dock, CBI also bolstered its commitment to remove physical obstacles to sailing because the new dock provides better access and functionality for those with physical disabilities.

The founding and early history of CBI is itself a classic Boston story, summed up at the article linked here -- Sailing for All: Joe Lee and America's First Public Community Sailing Program. For your correspondent, high points of the article include the fact that the second story of the boathouse was added in the 1987 (you really can't tell just looking at the building), more than 45 years after the initial structure was built in 1941, as well as the story of bureaucractic turf battles and the careful application of class and ethnic distinctions by certain of the powers-that-be in the late 1930s and early 1940s to frustrate and delay the implementation of an idea whose time clearly had come. Luckily, the effort to create and sustain a gateway for everyone to use the Upper Charles River Basin's delightful watersheet has survived and thrived. To return this post to the personal, my father-in-law, a native of St. Ambrose's Parish in Dorchester, never tires of describing how he learned sailing at CBI starting as an 11 year-old in 1952. The twin facts that his grandchildren participate in the exact same program and that that program retains its core mission more than a half century later are worth celebrating.

Blog Post No. 2012-07: Hayward Place takes its place on the High Spine...

And a long-empty hole in the urban fabric is finally restored

Photo 1: Looking south on Washington Street, with Modern, Opera House, and
Paramount theaters in view.

Photo 2: Looking across Washington Street from
the front of the Opera House, with foundation excavated.

Photo 3: Looking north along Washington Street,
Lafayette Place in the background.

Photo 4: The project advertising board, showing a rendering
of the competed building.

The Location: The block bounded by Hayward Place, Harrison Avenue, Avenue de Lafayette, and Washington Street, Boston, MA.

Year of Urban Fabric Restoration: 2013 (scheduled).

The Story: We're back on the High Spine, previously discussed here at this weblog some time ago in a post about The W Hotel over on Stuart Street. We've come around the Hinge Block at this point, and are looking at another long-vacant parcel a couple blocks up Washington Street - Hayward Place. Like the W Hotel's site, this was a surface parking lot for many years, even after the Boston Redevelopment Authority, which owned the property, put it out to bid and selected Millennium Partners as the redevelopers in the early part of the last decade. Millennium, having just completed the massive residential, hotel, and commercial complex across Washington Street that is now know as the Ritz-Carlton Towers, somewhat surprisingly proposed an office tower. That plan ultimately gave way to a residential condominium proposal before the downturn, and then finally last year to the residential rental project now under construction. You've got to be patient when you're thinking and talking about relatively large projects in central locations. They take time to come together, and Millennium is now onto an even bigger test further down the street at One Franklin, the spectacularly failed redevelopment of the former Filene's department store site that has left a yawning pit in the very heart of Downtown Crossing.

But let's don't turn our attention up the street too quickly. This is a very nice piece of work that Millennium has underway. The Boston Globe piece by Casey Ross from last fall ("Construction begins on another residential tower in downtown Boston") gives the statistics and a higher quality visual of the completed building. Washington Street is Boston's Broadway, the street that ran from the heart of the old town at the top of King Street out to the Neck of the colonial period, when the Shawmut Peninsula on which Boston was built narrowed down to a finger of land that was just wide enough for what was then "Orange Street" to be built atop it. From there, it ran through Roxbury toward points south. Despite this high level of symblic importance, the downtown section of Washington Street suffered along with all of urban America as broad economic and cultural shifts at the middle of the last century collectively pronounced it obsolete and irrelevant and then dangerous and suited only to the adult entertainment trade. But the good buildings and walkable street patterns that make up worthwhile urban fabric have a way of surviving - or maybe there were just so many good buildings and such a dense street pattern, and the tidal wave that was urban renewal and auto-oriented transportation planning and infrastructure didn't last as long as it seemed. Thankfully, the Paramount, the Opera House, and the Modern theaters, along with the old Boylston Market building (now the China Trade Center) and H.H. Richardson's Hayden Building, among others, all survived, albeit sometimes in dramatically altered forms, in this stretch of Washington Street. And the streets and blocks themselves were left largely intact. Thus, what has come after, including not only the Ritz-Carlton Towers but also Archstone's development as well as the Kensington Place building now under construction a couple blocks down, has something worthwhile and comprehensible to fit into.
The RTUF Sketch: It's really a whole city block in a symbolically important part of town.

Figure 1: The new building will provide desperately needed reciprocating
urban fabric on all 4 of its sides.