Copley Square, sometime in the 70s:
<img src = "http://66.230.220.70/images/post/bostonintheseventies/3380.jpg" height=500>
There are a bunch of really cool photos of 70s Boston <a href = "http://www.archboston.org/community/showthread.php?t=2439">in this thread</a> at archboston.org. I was particulary surprised that Copley Square Plaza was originally very much like City Hall Plaza! *shivers*
Incidentally, my great-grandfather's first job when he came to Boston from rural NH to make his fortune (sometime around 1901) was selling hot dogs out of a bucket in Scollay Square.
<a href="http://www.pps.org/great_public_spaces/one?public_place_id=148">"This is one of the most disappointing places in America."</a>
May I humbly suggest an expansive bench in the middle of it all?
<img src="http://images.inmagine.com/img/photographerschoice/pcrf018/pcrf018886.jpg">
As far as I know, the park authorities have no problem with such activities.
<img src="http://photos.igougo.com/images/p162181-Boston-Fountain_at_Copley_Square.jpg">
I like the building, think the plaza could be fixed up.
In the winter when the water is drained, the fountain interior is a fantastic skateboarding area. And while this does do some minor damage to the concrete corners (seen as a white stripe in the above photo's lower right), it gets covered by water for most of the year.
1) Tearing down the buildings
2) Putting the streets back in, in the same places and with the same widths they had in the 1950s
3) Selling off the land in the same small chunks it was divided into in the 50's, and disallowing anyone from buying up too many contiguous chunks.
So, CC, you like the place because it's disappointing? Or because others think it's disappointing?
I'm not sure that benches or greenery will really fix anything here. The issue is that there's a giant open area with no reason at all for anybody to do anything but cut through. If it's to be a cut-through, then it should be smaller (and should let you easily cut through!)... if it's to be a place for people to be, then there needs to be a reason for people to be there. Benches won't do that.
open space; place for concerts, gatherings, protests, freestyle bmx; fascinating architecture; always relatively clean; excellent terminus for victory parades; so fun in rain storms; etc...
Part of my interest though is how some people really, REALLY dislike City Hall Plaza. It illicits a cornucopia of opinions; it's doing something right on an artistic level as well.
I walked through the Fens after having lunch at the Christian Science reflecting pool. Saw an elder Chinese man catching (and not releasing) sunfish. Nice day for it.
City Hall and its plaza should definitely remain, they just need some rejiggering to make them more friendly to the walking public. But your plan of tearing down buildings is a wonderful idea concerning those other 2 buildings as well as that godawful mental health building down the street. It's terrific area for mixed use residential/commercial buildings (which it once was!).
City hall sucks because it is an unending staircase. It does have the coolest sculpture in the city though. That freaky abstract horse looking thing named "Argument", which is near a bunch of benches and trees.
<img src = "http://tbn0.google.com/hosted/images/c?q=cdaba4d1907acd6d_landing">
<img src = "http://tbn0.google.com/hosted/images/c?q=0f937c51193390cc_landing">
<img src = "http://tbn0.google.com/hosted/images/c?q=a68e818f796ca831_landing">
<img src = "http://tbn0.google.com/hosted/images/c?q=fb062465d8684223_landing">
<img src = "http://tbn0.google.com/hosted/images/c?q=300289536763495d_landing">
I like it! Bostonians congregating on City Hall Plaza for something other than a festival, protest, or concert. Who'd a thunk it?
TFC! You can solve at least one of these problems single-handedly!
http://members.virtualtourist.com/vt/t/1c7/
the blurb she sent out is reposted below, if any ridesiders have anything to say and want to submit it. :)
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A little while ago I posted about my most recent mad creative project, Place/Time, a literary journal based on focusing on a specific place and time and seeing what falls out. For our first issue, we're looking at Boston in 1997, and may be putting that in conversation with 1897, the turn of the previous century, after a longer submission that did a brilliant job of doing just that. We've pushed our submissions deadline back to December 1st; the stuff we've gotten is great but we're hoping to get a little more of it. Realistically, starting a journal out of nothing like this on a tight schedule, I don't expect to get inundated with submissions from friends, let alone strangers; but consider this a first reminder if I haven't gotten around to emailing you yet, and an invitation to drop me a line if you've got an idea in your head, whether it be something you'd like to produce or otherwise. We'd love to read some more fiction, especially, but we're also interested in book reviews of books that either were written then or deal with that time. (I've had someone recommend Zodiac, recently, as a book that would be particularly good for this.) So if this sounds exciting to you, drop me a comment or an email! (rachel(at)akrasiac[dot]org) I'd love to hear from you, and I look forward to presenting issue 1 of Place/Time to all of you and to the world at the end of December.
1997 was actually the year *before* i moved to boston, but i did spend 4 or 5 chunks of a few days there - one of which was particularly memorable. the trick will be whether i can capture something externally mundane in a way that makes the internal relevance interesting....