Mapping the Unmappable:
Boston as an Emotional Landscape
Boston City Hall Plaza: A Barren Desert of Civic Engagement
Casey Dalager
When one first sees the Boston City Hall Plaza, he cannot help but to be impressed. Architecturally speaking, the plaza certainly makes an impression, perfectly framing the large, imposing, brutalist City Hall that sits just beyond it. However, the plaza’s purpose is not very apparent at first to the uninformed; the large concrete city hall appears more like a fortress than a place of civic decisions, and this only makes the plaza that much more imposing. Even with that being said, the question arises; with such a large open space directly adjacent to the heart of Boston’s civic decisions, why is it almost always empty? The apparent failure of the Boston City Hall Plaza is the direct result of many initial bad decisions, failures on the part of Boston city planners, and decades of the city failing to correct these problems.
To better understand the faults in the plaza, one must first go back to before its construction. According to Jean Gibran, Sylvia McDowell, and Mary Howland Smoyer of the Boston Women’s Heritage Trail, where the Boston City Hall Plaza sits today was once “the eighteenth century Brattle Square” (16). Alongside this once bustling civic center, as stated by Anthony Mitchell Sammarco in his book Boston: A Century of Progress, stood historic Brattle Square Church as designed by Thomas Dawes (28). In addition, right on Brattle Square was the home of second president John Adams where he lived with his wife, Abigail, for some time (Gibran, McDowell, Smoyer, 16). This historic square was once a hub of trade and travel in Boston, but as referenced in Jonathan Hale’s article in Architectural Record the square, along with a huge section of old Boston was leveled in the early sixties, destroying centuries of history, as part of an attempt to revitalize a weak economy (51).
The destruction of Brattle Square was made worse by the new plaza’s lack of civic usefulness. Over the years there have been many critiques of the plaza on pretty much all aspects of its structure. However, Stephen Carr et al. gets to the heart of the matter in their book Public Space. While City Hall Plaza is based off of the designs of the Italian Piazza del Campo, an effective locus of civic, economic, and pedestrian activity, the plaza fails to mirror the piazza because while one sits in the center of many shops, restaurants, and has its own history, Boston’s plaza is framed by almost solely government buildings (Carr et al. 88-89). It is because of this poor civic planning that the square is almost always vacant. David Monteyne quotes in his article “Boston City Hall and a History of Reception” that one visitor’s opinion of the plaza was that “its (sic) just a lot of wasted space” (45).
Even if Boston City Hall Plaza had a more central or busier location, it still would not be a very popular place for the citizenry to congregate. Architecturally, the plaza is impressive, but practically speaking, it is ill suited for comfort; Claire Cooper Marcus and Carolyn Francis highlight in their book People Places: Design Guidelines for Urban Open Space, Part 4 that the plaza is “clearly designed to fulfill architectural rather than human comfort needs” (2). This is further shown by Carr et al. with the plaza’s “few places to sit” and even the seating provided is immobile, uncomfortable concrete (89-90). Even greater than the plaza’s lack of seating is its lack of shade. This has rendered the plaza as a large open expanse that is described by Robert Cambell and Peter Vanderwarker in their “Four Short Essays Comment on the Peculiar ways Cities Do or Don’t Work” as “a miserable sunbaked desert in summer, and a frozen windswept tundra in winter” (59). Because of it being such an uncomfortable space, Cambell and Vanderwarker go on to state that the plaza is “empty of pedestrians nearly all the time” (59). Marcus and Francis describe the situation the best when they mention that “the people of Boston are left with little more than a space to be crossed uncomfortably on their way to somewhere else” (2).
Dalager, Casey. "City Hall and its Plaza." 7 February 2015
Dalager, Casey. "The Frozen Windswept Tundra." 7 February 2015
In addition to failing functionally, there is much evidence that the design of the Boston City Hall Plaza has failed symbolically as well. Carr et al. states that “City Hall is one of Boston’s most monumental and least-used public open spaces” (88). Like every monument, Boston City Hall Plaza was built with a stronger symbolism in mind. According to Carr et al., “the design was said to represent the ideals of openness and accessibility in government” however, in reality the “great barren plaza seems to speak instead of the government’s inaccessibility and of the insignificance of the individual citizen” (89). Interestingly enough, the current City Hall and City Hall Plaza design was picked specifically for its symbolistic and architectural prevalence, according to Monteyne (45). Simply put, the construction of this plaza failed in every way it tried to succeed.
It is no secret that the City Hall Plaza and the City Hall itself are disliked. However, all attempts to renovate the plaza, or to completely demolish everything have been met with little success. Even when the mayor is the one calling for demolition, as stated by Hale, there is no progress (51). There have been multiple calls to reconstruct the plaza over the years, most recently in the mid-nineties. “A Face-Lift for City Hall Plaza” in the journal Architectural Record talks about one such plan that was conceived in 1996. This proposal contained plans to transform the city hall “into a more pedestrian, civic space” by introducing new amenities that would increase the area’s popularity such as “a revised subway station, a hotel, shops, cafes, a visitor’s center, new streets, an electronic billboard, an amphitheater, and a music garden” (17). However, nineteen years later, the only plan that has had any progress at all is the lengthy, and disruptive remodeling of the Government Center T stop. As stated by Hale, another plan was issued three years later that included the new construction of a “tree-shaded green, a glass enclosed winter garden, and an interactive fountain covering nearly half an acre” (51). There were even plans to rebuild one of the streets that was eliminated in the 60s in order to reconnect the plaza to the North End, yet once again, sixteen years later, very little has changed (Hale, 51).
Dalager, Casey. "Construction of The City Hall T-Station is Slow Going." 7 February 2015
In the words of Monteyne, to this day, “City Hall Plaza continues to grace the Project for Public Space’s Hall of Shame” (45). Due to the failing of the civic and symbolic aspects of the City Hall Plaza, it would make sense that the city would try its hardest to make the best of what they have, after failing to do away with it multiple times. However, as Marcus and Francis state, “although the vast central expanse of the plaza demands to be filled with people and activity, the city makes little effort outside of scheduling summer concerts to fill the plaza with the events that would give it life” (2). One of the events that does get scheduled in the plaza is actually a very popular music festival called Boston Calling. The well-known musicians who attend draw the crowds, but even then, many are unhappy about the setting. One Boston Calling goer, Cameron Sleeper, spoke that even amidst the great music “It sucks being there. It’s on cement and it hurts standing there” (Sleeper). Even when the plaza is being used for what it is designed for, it still falls short in function.
Dalager, Casey. "In The Winter, the Seating Area is not Evenly Cleared." 7 February 2015
It is apparent that it takes nothing less than a large music festival with big-name singers like Lorde to actually draw a crowd to the sunbaked plaza. Yet when Cambell and Vanderwarker asked city planners why City Hall Plaza should exist, they were told “that this is the place for civic celebration” (59). It is the city’s view that this is a place for people to gather--whether they like it or not--in the event of city-wide celebration. City leaders argue that the plaza would be used when and if the Red Sox win the World Series. However, Cambell and Vanderwarker argue that in the cases of sports celebration at least, the city's reasoning is a fallacy (59). They mention that even though the Yankees win the World Series more often than anyone else, New York City does not have a dedicated plaza for their celebration, and instead simply takes to Times Square (59). The truth of the matter was made even more apparent this past Sunday when Boston’s football team, the New England Patriots, won the Super Bowl, and the City Hall Plaza remained deserted.
It is clear that a lot needs to change with the Boston City Hall Plaza, but this is not just limited to architectural matters. To some, the history of the plaza makes it more than just an eyesore. Harvard Professor Hashim Sarkis explores some deeper, more cultural aspects of the square in his article “Space for Recognition: on the Design of Public Space in a Multicultural Society.” “Ask a Boston-based architect,” he urges “and you’ll hear that architects should aim at ‘providing places and experiences that bind people together for a society that is more diverse’” (153). However, Sarkis believes that the Boston City Hall Plaza fails to meet these qualifications, stating that “for the plaza to become more inclusive, memories of exclusion and oppression have to be erased” (153). Though Boston has always been a more civil-rights minded city compared to a lot of America, being the virtual birthplace of the American ideal of individual freedom, dark memories still cloud the city. Sarkis believes that a redesign of the Boston City Hall Plaza needs to be done, not because of its lack of functionality, but to remove a location of oppression and racism-based violence (153). Sarkis quotes Boston citizen and community activist, Hubie Jones, saying that “the litmus test of whether the right uplifting atmosphere has been achieved will be the day he (sic) can walk through the plaza and not have his mind occupied by the image of Ted Landsmark, a black youth, who was speared with an American flag by a white teenager on the plaza in 1976 during a protest of court-ordered busing” (153). It is important to remember the mistakes of the past, so that they are not repeated in the future, but if all an area does is bring up bad memories, it should be changed. Perhaps City Hall Plaza could be redesigned as a place of remembrance, keeping the memories of the oppressed alive, but still make the area more pleasant to those still affected by the tragedies.
Dalager, Casey. "To Some, the Plaze Remains a Symbol of racial Inequality." 7 February 2015
It is clear that the Boston City Hall Plaza is not very popular with anyone besides architects. Overall, it is an uncomfortable, windblown wasteland of concrete that is fatiguing to stand on, has no good places to sit, and very little shaded areas. In addition, for some it carries memories of hatred and racial violence that may be better lost to the past. The Boston City Hall Plaza is overall a complete failure in its purpose as a civic gathering space. However, to this day the plaza remains the same, if not degraded from, what it was in the Sixties. Certainly, something needs to be done with the plaza, either a complete demolition of the City Hall and everything around it, or an extensive remastery of the space into something beautiful, something inclusive, something that can be enjoyed by all. Unfortunately, the historic square that was leveled to create the concrete monstrosity can never be recovered, but perhaps it could be used as a model for a better plaza, one that becomes the center of civic, economic, and pedestrian traffic that people actually want to be in. However, this may be unachievable because all other efforts to recreate this space have failed in the past, but perhaps as the new century starts to gain momentum, there can be new motivation, a new drive to create a better civic space. A place to gather has always been an important aspect of every community. However, where the people want to gather and what the city offers do not always align. One or the other will have to compromise eventually and that will result in either a better City Hall Plaza, or a bunch of miserable concert-goers with sore feet.
Sources
A.B. “A Face-Lift for City Hall Plaza.” Architectural Record 184.7 (1996): 17. LexisNexis. Web. 31 Jan. 2015.
Cambell, Robert and Peter Vanderwarker. “Four Short Essays Comment on the Peculiar Ways Cities Do or Don’t Work.” Architectural Record 191.8 (2003): 59. Academic Search Premier. Web. 31 Jan. 2015.
Carr, Stephen, et al. Public Space. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Web. 31 Jan. 2015.
Gibram, Jean, Sylvia McDowell, and Mary Howland Sawyer. Boston Women’s Heritage Trail: Seven Self-Guided Walks Through Four Centuries of Boston Women’s History. Boston: Boston Women’s Heritage Trail, 2006. Web. 31 Jan. 2015.
Hale, Jonathan. “Boston’s City Hall Plaza Edges Nearer to Overhaul.” Architectural Record 187.2 (1999): 51. LexisNexis. Web. 31 Jan. 2015.
Marcus, Claire Cooper and Carolyn Francis, eds. People Places: Design Guidelines for Urban Open Space, Part 4. Maiden, MA: John Wiley and Sons Inc., 1998. Web. 31 Jan. 2015.
Monteyne, David. “Boston City Hall and a History of Reception.” Journal of Architectural Education 65.1 (2011): 45-62. Academic Search Premier. Web. 31 Jan. 2015.
Sammarco, Anthony Mitchell. Boston: A Century of Progress. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 1995. Web. 31 Jan. 2015.
Sarkis, Hashim. “Space for Recognition: or the Design of Public Space in a Multicultural Society.” New Political Science 19.1-2 (1997): 153. Taylor & Francis Online. Web. 31 Jan. 2015.
Sleeper, Cameron. Personal interview. 31 Jan. 2015
A bit about Casey
Casey Dalager is a Video Media Arts Production major studying writing and directing film. Though he plans on going into the movie industry, Casey has always been a writer. A fondness for writing that evolved into a love of screenwriting is actually what led him to Emerson in the first place. Casey now writes for a number of Emerson television programs including EIV’s In Focus, Speechless, and The Dish. In addition, Casey is heavily involved with producing and directing for Warlords, and being a part of the production team for Paranoia Playhouse.