Boston's Fear of Heights and Fear of Greatness

I am on Boylston Street, in front of the Prudential Center. I have always considered Boylston Street as Boston's Broadway, with all due respects to South Boston. It is the only street in Boston, unlike its brethren in the Financial District, that was part of a classic rectilinear plan. I do love the twists and turns of our old city, and by no means am I an advocate of this Roman template.

But Broadway means a "broad way," with wide vistas, and some viewable distance. And so, as I look straight east toward the Financial District, I see a massive, multi-colored arrangement of buildings, each seemingly growing out of each other in glass, masonry, aluminum, and, yes, even Boston brick. And they are all tall. Very tall. And I love it.

I love it because it speaks to me with the same vibrancy with which Carl Sandburg spoke of in describing the true birthplace of and still most stunning assembly of the skyscraper, Chicago, of which he wrote:

"Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action,
cunning as a savage pitted against the wilderness,
Bareheaded,
Shoveling,
Wrecking,
Planning,
Building, breaking, rebuilding,
Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with
white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young man laughs,
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has never lost a battle,Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse and under his ribs the heart of the people"

Analagous as cities--no. But when did we lose our fierceness and our pride? But, the better question is why?

And the simple answer is that we suffer from a fear of heights, from a fear of expression, by a false-imprinted visions of city planners that "Thou shalt build small, or thou shalt build not at all."

First, let me point out that buildings are not tall because of the inexplicable egos of those that build them. Is nybody having issues with skyscrapers in Lincoln or Dover, Chelmsford, Wakefield? Buildings derive from the density of those who seek out their counterparts in business, culture, and intellect, all to the great benefit to society. The greatest of ideas do not come from the flowery lunchrooms in Stamford. They come from the great cities--Athens, Rome, Paris, London, New York. Are we not worthy of this, to be called great, or do we relegate ourselves, at least in our architecural restriction, to seek our way into a lesser orbit?

All roads lead to Boston. It has been the port of entry to New England for 400 years. It is a walking city, all the more reason for density on the narrow peninsula on which it sits. Do we begrudge New York with its towers of business? Or Chicago, where our economy experienced most closely the shift from agriculture to manufacturing to professional business and thrust up towers to accommodate the need?

Look no further than the models of Willam Alson (1964) who so aptly described the density coefficient of the great cities or the work of Martin Cadwallader at University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1985 in his work on the density gradient of the American city. Of visit the Coloseum in Rome.

So I look down Boylston Street and I mentally start tearing down the buildings that would not meet our planning code. NOTE: There really is no such thing as a planning code in Boston--we pretend there is and the Mayor uses it selectively to deny a tall building. Or he reverses it and pulls out the magic "PDA" trump card, the "Planned Development Area", in which "if the Mayor didn't plan it, don't even think of developing it.

But this fear of heights is not the Mayor's alone. It is the acquiescence of the everyday Bostonian to believe in the false credo of urban planning in which all things tall are all things evil. We have countless choppers, cutters, pickers, none of whom has ever adequately explained why tall, in and of itself, is bad.

Please do not talk to me of shadows, of wind, and of rain, of private views now obscured. Those who advocate the small are no more than the cousins of the country mice that come to the city, enjoy its delights, but seek to turn the homes of their hosts into the tiny pieces of miceland they crave.

Our so-called zoning calls are subject to paroxsms of peripatetic behavior. The Mayor literally shuns the efforts on The Chiofaro Company to construct towers on what we are all afraid to see is our new deadspace, green though it may be along the waterfront. Quick, count how many people you saw on a Sunday afternoon in the three parcels that face The Federal Reserve, International Place, and Rowes Wharf. I counted 6 last Sunday and I think two were about to get married at the Langdon. Buth this same Mayor, 3 years earlier, wakes from a nap and declares that we shall have a 150 foot tower on Federal Street. Of course, nobody sees the point in this tower but fear not, the parking is still cheap in the city's parking garage on the site.

OK, OK, back to my view. I have just torn down the Custom House, the Federal Reserve Bank, and One Beacon Street. I miss the clock, I miss the glow, I miss the mass. But we must do what we are told. I just smashed all the glass to the Ritz Carlton, laid waste to One and 100 Federal Street and to the new State Street Global Tower. I miss the audacity and guts to turn the Combat Zone into a luxury zone. I can only commit to memory that Federal Street served as the reawakening of modern finance in Boston (my apologies, Mayor White). I say farewell to a business outpost that tried to bridge the Financial District and Chinatown. There is so left much to do but I do not have the time. I am not sure what I will see--I am not sure what our fear of heights wants us to see--squart stubby buildings with all of the dynamic flair of lego construction.

The Gods be ware. I just turned my head toward the Hancock.

Oh, yes, the maximum height that all of the buildings I just tore down, were such an arrogant attempt be made, without special favor from the mayor, could not, by law, exceed 10 stories.