Back Bay (Boston)

Seen from the Back Bay from Charles River

Back Bay is a historic district ( Neighborhood) the city of Boston, Massachusetts in the United States. Together with the neighboring Beacon Hill lived there in the year 2010 27.476 inhabitants. Back Bay is famous for its Victorian brownstones, as applicable with the best preserved examples of the urban design of the 19th century in the United States. There are also many other buildings in the district that are very interesting from an architectural point of view, as well as major cultural institutions such as the Boston Public Library. The largest building in the city, the Hynes Convention Center, is also in the Back Bay district.

Before the result of the 19th century Landaufschüttungsmaßnahmen was located on the site of the present city district an actual bay. Today, the district is shared with Beacon Hill one of the most expensive areas in all of Boston.

• 3.1 street and buildings 3.1.1 Copley Square
• 3.1.2 Other famous buildings

• 4.1 traffic
• 4.2 Education

Geography

Expansion of the urban area

According to the Neighborhood Association of the Back Bay are the borders of the district as follows:

• North: Charles River
• East: The section of the Arlington Street to Park Square
• South: The distance from Columbus Avenue to the tracks of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad at Copley Place, Huntington Avenue, Dalton Street and Massachusetts Turnpike
• West: Charles Gate East

Boroughs

A little known district in Back Bay, St. Botolph or formally Saint Botolph Architectural Conservation District. The area extends from north to south of the Huntington Avenue to the Southwest Corridor, and from west to east by the Massachusetts Avenue to Harcourt Avenue. In this district are located almost exclusively brownstones.

History

Before carrying out land reclamation projects in the 19th century Back Bay was a bay in the west of the Shawmut peninsula, which led to the opposite side of Boston Harbor between Boston and Cambridge, the Charles River from the west. The bay was subject to the tide, so that the water level daily swayed several feet and the bay at low tide turned into a swamp. Already 5,200 years ago built at this location Indians their fishing weirs, whose remains were discovered during the construction of the Boston subway in 1913.

In 1814, the Boston and Roxbury Mill Corporation was commissioned to build a dam, thereby delimit a mill pond. The next dam should also serve as a toll road connecting Boston with Watertown, bypassing Boston Neck. After a few years of operation finally started in 1857 with a large-scale project to fill the area enclosed by the perineal area to gain new land.

In addition, 6 mi ( 9.66 km ) were relocated rail lines from quarries in Needham to the site on which trains with 35 wagons shuttled 16 times per day and gravel and other fill material delivered. William Dean Howells wrote about the construction that "the streets of Back Bay with their hollow foundations already existed on the newly created land area, while the trains still started off Bankrupts other material. " Land reclamation measures for today's Back Bay were 1882 completed while the total project the mainland today, Kenmore Square the 1890s and was completed with the Back Bay Fens in 1900. The former dam is now buried under the Beacon Street.

The completion of the Charles River Dam in 1910 made ​​out of the mouth of the Charles River a freshwater lake. The Charles River Esplanade Park was built to take advantage of the improved potential of the river for recreation. Since then, the park was redesigned several times, including through the construction of Storrow Drive.

Culture and sights

Road and buildings

The conceptual design of the district was created by Arthur Gilman, who worked for the company Gridley James Fox Bryant. He drew his inspiration by the audit conducted by Georges -Eugène Haussmann renovation of Paris, the broad, parallel and tree-lined avenues provided for, as they had previously seen in any other district of Boston.

Therefore, in the Back Bay five east-west corridors: Beacon Street, Marlborough Street, Commonwealth Avenue, Newbury Street and Boylston Street. These are interrupted at regular intervals by running from north to south streets: Arlington (along the western border of the Boston Public Garden ), Berkeley, Clarendon, Dartmouth, Exeter, Fairfield, Gloucester and Hereford. All except the Commonwealth Avenue are one-way streets.

Restrictions such as requirements regarding construction line created on the filled areas of the former bay a harmonious image of three - and four-story houses rows of sandstone, which are mainly used today as residences - alone at the Newbury Street are many commercially used buildings. The district was listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is considered one of the best preserved examples of urban architecture of the 19th century in the United States.

In 1966, the Back Bay Architectural Commission was established to regulate changes to the facades of the houses in the district and to control, thus " preserving the heritage of the city of Boston by preventing destruction ".

Since the 1960s, Boston's High Spine concept of influence in interaction with development plans, which allowed the construction of high-rise buildings along the Massachusetts Turnpike, the development of major projects in the city.

Copley Square

At the Copley Square stand next to Trinity Church, the Boston Public Library, the John Hancock Tower and other notable buildings:

• The first monumental structure in Copley Square was the original building of the Museum of Fine Arts. Construction began in 1870 and the building opened in 1876, with a large part of the exhibition pieces from the art collection of the Boston Athenaeum came. The red, in the style of Gothic Revival building was pulled down and rebuilt as the Fairmont Copley Plaza Hotel in 1912.
• Designed by McKim, Mead, and White building of the Boston Public Library ( 1888-92 ) is a leading example of Beaux-Arts architecture in the United States and should be " for the People's Palace " a. The Baedeker travel guide from 1893 describes it as "venerable and impressive, easy and pedantic ," and as a "worthy neighbors [ ... ] to Trinity Church ." At this time the library with 600,000 books was the largest public collection of literature in the world.
• The Old South Church or New Old South Church (1872-1875) is located at the address 645 Boylston Street right across from the Boston Public Library. It was designed by the Boston architectural firm Cummings and Sears in the Venetian Gothic style, which follows the rules of the British social philosopher and architectural critic John Ruskin (1819-1900), which he describes in his essay, The Stones of Venice. The Old South Church is an important example of Ruskin's influence on American architecture.
• Finally, the Trinity Church is mentioned, which was built from 1872 to 1877 and designed by Henry Hobson Richardson.
• Over time, there was in Back Bay so far a total of three different building named Hancock Building: The first building was designed in 1922 by Parker, Thomas & Rice Stephen L. Brown Building.
• He was succeeded in 1947, designed by HDB / Cram and Ferguson The Old John Hancock Building, the tallest building in Boston was to the construction of the Prudential Tower.
• In 1972, finally, IM Pei designed the John Hancock Tower, which was the tallest building in all of New England with 60 floors. It has a dark blue reflective glass facade and a floor plan in the form of a narrow parallelogram. The architect Donlyn Lyndon, which until the early 1970s headed the architecture department at MIT from the late 1960s, described an early press release from the owner of the tower as " impudence " in which it was alleged that the building reflecting the architectural character of the district. Lyndon, however, took the view that the tower was " nihilistic, arrogant, insolent in an elegant way, but not mediocre ."

Other famous buildings

• The 52 -story Prudential Tower in 1964 a pearl of the cityscape, but is now regarded by some critics as "ugly". Although the tower itself gained little architectural glory, the Prudential Center was in 2006 awarded the Award for Best Mixed Use Property of the Urban Land Institute. The Colonnade Hotel is located in 1971 on the back of the building.
• Built in 2002, 36 -storey building named 111 Huntington Avenue is number 8 of the tallest buildings in Boston. It has a glass conservatory on the roof and a 1.2 acres ( 4,856 m²) extensive garden and finished in third place of the Emporis Skyscraper Award 2002.
• Designed by Arthur Gilman in 1861 Arlington Street Church, St. Martin of the London church -in- the-Fields inspired and was the first church that was built on the padded floor.
• Dating from 1905 and 1988 restored Berkeley Building of Codman and Despradelle is characterized by a white terra cotta facade in the style of Beaux-Arts architecture on a steel frame.
• The Gibson House Museum from 1860 has been preserved almost in its original state.
• The 1894 built and 1904 extended Church The First Church of Christ, Scientist is the central part of the Christian Science Plaza.
• The Saint Clement Eucharistic Shrine was built in 1922.
• The in between 1865 and 1867 by Richard M. Upjohn built Church of the Covenant is a rock composed of conglomerate Church of the Presbyterian Church ( USA) in the Gothic Revival style.

Economy and infrastructure

In particular, on Newbury and Boylston Street, but also at the Prudential Center and in the malls at Copley Place in Back Bay, there are many boutiques and shops. Around the Hynes Convention Center, there are many hotels, including the Lenox, the Colonnade and the Fairmont.

Traffic

At Copley Square and Back Bay MBTA station bus stop of public local and long-distance traffic. In addition, the Green Line can be used at bus stops Arlington, Copley, and Hynes Convention Center. The Orange Line stops at Back Bay, from where Amtrak and commuter trains depart.

Education

In the past, the Back Bay area was the site of some of the leading institutions in Boston, but they are moved in the meantime due to extra space. Other, smaller cultural and educational institutions to enrich today the district.

The art collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston was in 1876-1909 at Copley Square before it was brought to its present, much larger rooms in the Fenway - Kenmore neighborhood.

The present site of the Newbury Building was occupied from 1866 to 1939 from the Rogers Building at MIT. In the immediate vicinity there was a smaller building of the Boston Society of Natural History. The Boston Society of Natural History eventually became the Museum of Science and moved in the 1950s to its present building on the Charles River Dam. The original museum building escaped the only building block of the demolition work and still stands today.

The Emerson College, which is located in the center of Boston since the 1990s, was previously spread over several buildings in the Back Bay. Today a resident in the district are the Berklee College of Music and the Boston Architectural College. Founded in 1845 New England Historic Genealogical Society is the oldest and largest genealogical society in the United States and is also headquartered in Back Bay, as well as the Goethe -Institut and the Alliance Francaise.