What's Right about Boston's City Hall

It's my guess that about 95% of Bostonians would not mind if Boston City Hall were demolished tomorrow. About a year ago, the Mayor was so desparate to get out, he almost built a building in the ocean.

But the entire problem and the tremendous potential of the building is the landscape upon which it sits. Consider the State House (New State House, as a proper Bostonian would say.) If the building were built on the vast acreage that City Hall sits on, it would immediately lose its glory. City Hall is a majestic building. It is a city on a hill unto itself, but inverted. The problem is that nobody ever thought to bring the grandeur of City Hall itself to what could be the grand approaches to City Hall.

And I am not talking about the brick. I’m talking about bringing light and activity in concentric circles out from the base of City Hall. Doing so should have been simultaneous with the design of the building. Any building with an inverted base will naturally have a dark and shadowy base. Kallman et al forgot about this. As you approach City Hall, instead of looking up to see how the levels build upon each other, you look down into the pit of the entry. The lack of attention to light, a clear entry, and clear entry “flight paths,” if you will, defeat the architecture of the building. You feel like a mouse trying to find the hole into a massive hunk of cheese.

Grass is not the answer. It would be as unused as the brick plaza or the Dimway, oops Greenway, and would belittle the architecture itself. The answer to the context is varied, gentle elevations leading up into City Hall rather down into the pits. Imagine a series of ramparts approaching a castle except that along the ramparts we could build appropriately designed commercial, retail, and entertainment space—perfect space for an opera house which we embarrassingly do not have. But the approach must be up and toward the top of City Hall, not down and into the pit.

Back to the Old State House. How would you feel if there were McDonald’s bags on the lawn or plastic planes of glass in a few of the Governor’s office windows? The City has never taken care of City Hall. It is a disgrace. This is OUR building, and its care should be a matter of civic pride. The only response we manage to come up with is “tear it down, tear it down.” That’s fear speaking, not logic. About 10 years ago, the same crowd wanted to “re-clad” the Prudential Tower.

And all the architects who praise its design do that and nothing more. We are all wonderful critics and cynics, but few of us feel obligated to do anything. If the 1 million architects (that’s my estimate) who bobble around Boston and Cambridge want to bring life back to what, without dispute, is one of the country’s greatest examples of Brutalism, then they and we better look at the context of the property and the disgusting manner in which have let this property rot.

If we condemn City Hall to the wrecking ball, we condemn ourselves for a lack of will and imagination.