Let's embrace our inner brutality

[czsz]

In the BU thread I wrote:

Face it - Boston's brutalism collection is as good as its group of South End/Back Bay Victorian rowhouses. We should quit fighting that aesthetic legacy, embrace it as an integral part of Boston's heritage, and market it. Brutally.

Think about it. The costs associated with planning for and actually demolishing examples of the genre would be, to pun further, brutal. Better to make hay from what must be one of the country's, if not the world's best collections of this style. Imagine a walking tour of "Brutal Boston" - nicely alliterative, isn't it? Could it also be lucrative? While it doesn't quite have the earning power potential of the Freedom Trail, Boston's brutalism is bound to become an infinitely rarer and more fascinating commodity. It's also a way to present Boston in a fresh light, embracing its contribution to the arts of the 20th century.

The State Services Center, for one, already seduced Scorsesee. Could brutalism be Boston's less benign answer to Barcelona's Gaudi tourism?

BRUTAL BOSTON - The Walking Tour








Is this brutalism? It won't be, soon. RIP.




Fortress of Education.

The Brutalist Vatican:

[Beton Brut]

Originally Posted by czsz

Could brutalism be Boston's less benign answer to Barcelona's Gaudi tourism?

Maybe. You're pretty quotable today...

[Ron Newman]

The difference is, any brutalist building around Boston is either a functional failure (e.g. Hurley-Lindemann Building, City Hall), or had to be substantially reworked or repurposed in order to become a success (e.g. MIT Student Center, Harvard's Holyoke Center, the downtown Borders bookstore).

The Victorian rowhouses were successful from the very start and remain so today.

[czsz]

What? Who cares how "successful" they are? The point is to market them from the standpoint of architectural, cultural, and historical tourism. Plenty of exceptionally pointless follies have proved successful as attractions, after all.

[Ron Newman]

Can a red brick building be considered Brutalist? (And where is that one, anyway?)

Your added pictures have actually disproven some of my first reaction. The Christian Science plaza is beautiful.

[czsz]

The redbrick building is part of the Harvard Graduate School of Education...there's a "proper" brutalist concrete library attached which is just as good an example of the genre, too (couldn't find any pics of that, though).

[Ron Newman]

You'll want to add Harvard's Gund Hall to your list.

[Beton Brut]

Originally Posted by Ron Newman

Can a red brick building be considered Brutalist? (And where is that one, anyway?)

It's on Appian Way, across the street from Longfellow Hall / Radcliffe Yard.

Always reminded me of Marcel Breuer's Whitney Museum in NYC.

RE: Rudolph's Blue Cross Building

Originally Posted by czsz

Is this brutalism?

Tough call, czsz. It's brutalist in its materials, but the design vocabulary places it more in the realm of high-tech or structural expressionism. It is here that Rudolph presages his student, Norman Foster. For me, this is reason enough to preserve the building and incorporate it into Belkin's tower proposal.

[briv]

CZ, I like this idea. I have been planning to post a Brutalist Boston photo thread for a very long time, but I never got to it.

I think some of the more notable Brutalist buildings in the area are:
State Service Center (Rudolph);
Government Cntr. Garage (Kallman, McKinnel, Wood);
City Hall (Kallman, McKinnel, Wood);
Five Cents Saving Bank (Kallman, McKinnel, Wood);
First Church Restoration (Rudolph);
BAC (Ashley, Myer and Ass.);
Christian Science Cntr. Additions (Pei, Cobb, Freed);
BU Law Tower (Sert);
Peabody Terrace (Sert);
Gund Hall (Andrews)
Carpenter Center (Corbusier).

You can probably add Thompson's Design Research Building to that list as a precursor to today's softer, not-so-brutal New Brutalism, as well. Of course, you can make this list as long as you'd like. Scattered throughout the Boston area there are dozens and dozens of Brutalist buildings, both great and small, and everything in between.

Edit: It seems you already listed most of these.

It's funny you added Johnson's BPL. I thought about adding it as well. Everyone thinks that building is made of concrete, but it is the exact same granite, quarried from the exact same place, as the McKim building. It is definitely Brutalist in spirit though.

[Ron Newman]

Five Cents Saving Bank (Kallman, McKinnel, Wood); => now Borders bookstore. Washington St.

First Church Restoration (Rudolph); => 'rebuild' of a church that was mostly destroyed by fire. Marlborough St. Used to be called 'First and Second Church'.

Is Holyoke Center properly considered a Brutalist building?

[Beton Brut]

I'd add a couple of Hugh Stubbins' buildings, most notably the (old) State Street Bank tower in Post Office Square, and the Episcopal Divinity School Library near Harvard Square.

The Johnson wing of the BPL is brutalist, but its design palate is (call me nuts) lifted from Frank Lloyd Wright. The atrium references the Guggenheim, the arched windows, the Marin County Civic Center, the blocky massing, the Larkin Building.

[Cojapo]

Do we have to embrace it? The only reason I would like to see some of them kept around is so we don't repeat that style.

[tobyjug]

Street lamps in the Brutality Zone (realtors could market it as "The BruZe") will have to be period correct: pebbled concrete poles topped with large white globes.

[czsz]

I'm not sure I'd be as expansive in my definition of brutalism as to include the old State Street Bank tower. As an average architectural tourist, I'm sure I'd be rapt at the ornateness of City Hall or the State Services Center, but not necessarily the more marginal examples. Ditto the Holyoke Center (which I like because it works urbanistically, though it's still architecturally bland) and the Rudolph on Federal.

Street lamps in the Brutality Zone (realtors could market it as "The Bruze") will have to be period correct: pebbled concrete poles topped with large white globes.

I love this. Unfortunately, Government Center includes too many intervening styles, and the rest of the brutalist sites are rather spread out. No living it up in your renovated corrugated concrete loft in the Bruze.

[justin]

Originally Posted by Ron Newman

The difference is, any brutalist building around Boston is either a functional failure (e.g. Hurley-Lindemann Building, City Hall), or had to be substantially reworked or repurposed in order to become a success (e.g. MIT Student Center, Harvard's Holyoke Center, the downtown Borders bookstore).

The Victorian rowhouses were successful from the very start and remain so today.

Right: they are still single-family homes whose servants quarters, coal cellars, gas and wood ranges and stables are still there serving their original functions.

As you say, function can be tweaked; these building should be preserved for their divine form. Before they become a destination for more than a handful of architecture buffs, they'll need a lot of TLC.

justin

[Joe_Schmoe]

Add the Alewife T station to the list. And the Harvard medical school library. My take on it is that just like any other style, some of its examples are good, some bad. I've grown a certain respect for the Health and Human services building, although I despise the way it turns its back on Cambridge and Staniford St. City Hall would be better if something was done with Congress St, and the plaza wasn't so vast and a new building was built in the opposite corner of the plaza with a street wall on Cambridge St.

[unterbau]

Is the Boston 5 Cent Savings Bank really brutalist? Sure, it's concrete, but the massing doesn't really appear in the style of brutalism (maybe . Not to mention the exterior 'pillars' have granite on them.

I also don't feel that Sert's science center is especially brutalist- but that's just an opinion.

Some more notable brutalist bldgs in the area:
Tobin Elementary School, Cambridge - Pietro Belluschi
MIT Stratton Student Center, Cambridge - Eduardo Catalano
Catalano's Public Library in Allston(?) (This still exists, right?)
Harbor Towers - I M Pei
Quincy Adams Train Station, Quincy - ???
CRLS Addition - Eduardo Catalano
MIT Pei Bldgs
If we're including the BPL addition based on massing alone, it could be argued that the Federal Reserve tower is brutalist as well (maybe the UMass campus, too?) (and the Soverign Bank Bldg in Dorchester?)

[Scott]

Soverign Bank Bldg in Dorchester

On Gallivan Blvd in Neponset? It has been torn down and replaced. Big design blunder- too many windows, people don't want the whole world seeing them do their banking.

I would add Madison Park High and Brockton High, would they be considered Brutalist?

btw- I would like to see the Billerica Mall preserved for generations to come.

[Padre Mike]

How about U Mass, Boston and Bunker Hill C.C.? (I visited the latter recently for some business and got lost trying to find the office I was seeking and got lost again trying to exit the building)

[Scott]

^ I'd rather go to class in the old state prison.