Requiem for a View
The old view of the Hancock from the corner of Arlington and Tremont.
I was walking from my office in the South End to the T in Back Bay this evening, and wanted to be sure to snap a picture of the new view — or rather: lack thereof — of the Hancock since construction of a luxury high-rise to the south (on the corner of Stewart and Clarendon) got underway...
The new "view."
It may not seem like such a big deal, but I have enjoyed that unobstructed view of the glorious glass monolith for years, and I'm sad to see it go. At first it didn't register. I thought the one building under construction being superimposed on the other made a sort of clever optical illusion...
But as construction continued, it no longer struck me as particularly clever or an illusion...
...Just an unexceptional obstruction to a structure I had come to think of as visual poetry that not only reflected, but seemed to respond to the ever-changing skyscape. The Hancock is never the same, never static. From minute to minute and day to day, it lives and breathes with its environment in a way no other structure I know of does.
So it's begun to dawn on me that I'm losing something real. It's just a view, you'll say, and there are others. But the tenor and tone of that daily conversation with one of the city's landmarks I have come to love has changed, and my mood along with it.
Hmm...that is a real aesthetic loss - thanks for pointing it out; is the great 2-dimensional optical illusion one gets from the corner of Tremont & Berkeley also occluded? That would be further cause for dismay... The Hancock is really the only decent mirror-glass monolith I can think of, precisely due to its purity; getting all crudded-up around the base is a crying shame...
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I haven't been able to see the Hancock since they built that 131 Dartmouth monstrosity (the one with b.good and Douzo).
I used to get this weird reflected bluish light in my bedroom in the afternoon. Now, nothing.
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Man, don't I hate it when new erections get in the way of an excellent view.
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The Pru remains the only great work of modern architecture in Boston or Cambridge, the pretentious and overrated ICA nothwithstanding (it also looks really cheaply built, so maybe it will end up a teardown). The NU dorm on Huntington Ave. that has the glass front the peels away from the rest of the building at the top may also endure, we shall see. The Pru is just endlessly fascinating. From top to bottom, day and night, from any angle, it always provides something new, depending on the day and the weather. You get a great view of it from the south from the roofdeck on our building, and in the summer as the sun rises the articulation in the south side becomes a column of light. It's very inventive. The pile of crap that Robert Stern's firm "designed" (or perhaps just slapped their name on while a local firm did the actual work) is bad enough on it's own, but the fact that it intrudes on views of the Pru from the south is its real offense.
But perhaps the goddess of architecture (Hestia, I believe) is meteing out punishment. I recently heard from folks in the real estate world that not one of the units in that building have been sold.
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Hmm...I assume Toby means the Hancock, though the Pru has great 60s-camp value (I always thought they shoulda done the revamped mall up to be hyper-1965 or so and had a Marlo Thomas look alike throwing her hat (or shopping bag) in the air, exclaiming "I just LOVE the Pru!" instead we get bad 90s sci-fi-galleria with electric lavender trim...yuck...well, the new bit below the chrome dildo is a bit better...
And, yeah, I'm all with Toby - the ICA is vastly overrated and built like crap...they got a LOT of building for too little money, basically, and it's cool, but won't hold up well...and, sure, it looks pretty from the water, but who ever sees that side? The actual entry side looks like a factory loading-dock in Randolph...
Likewise, Bill Rawn's elegant NU tower is pretty damn good...better than the weirdly lumpish orange-brick dorms he did a few years before...
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My bad. I meant the John Hancock, of course.
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i do Think it`s time to open the 60th floor,up Jon
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