Concrete Changes: Architecture, Politics, and the Design of Boston City Hall

by Brian M Sirman

From the 1950s to the end of the twentieth century, Boston transformed from a city in freefall into a thriving metropolis, as modern glass skyscrapers sprouted up in the midst of iconic brick rowhouses. After decades of corruption and graft, a new generation of politicians swept into office, seeking to revitalize Boston through large-scale urban renewal projects. The most important of these was a new city hall, which they hoped would project a bold vision of civic participation. The massive Brutalist building that was unveiled in 1962 stands apart―emblematic of the city's rebirth through avant-garde design.

And yet Boston City Hall frequently ranks among the country's ugliest buildings. Concrete Changes seeks to answer a common question for contemporary How did this happen? In a lively narrative filled with big personalities and newspaper accounts, Brian M. Sirman argues that this structure is more than a symbol of Boston's modernization; it acted as a catalyst for political, social, and economic change.

ebook

Published March 1, 2018

Reviews

[Liam Sullivan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was skeptical that a book about a single building would hold my interest but Sirman breaks down the history of the building by focusing on the circumstances in Boston that lead to a call for a new City Hall, the design process, construction, the initial use and influence of the building, and the legacy of the building over 50 years later.

As someone who moved to Boston in 1998, and visited for the first time in the 1980s, I have only known the modern, thriving city. Sirman does a good job relating the doldrums of mid-century Boston devastated by economic collapse, suburbanism, and political corruption. The new City Hall served as a symbol of investing in Downtown Boston and the modern "Brutalist" style of architecture was a deliberate break from tradition to signal that Boston was forward-looking. The design by Kallmann, McKinnell, & Knowles was selected from a public competition, itself a symbol of Boston's new openness and transparency in government once haunted by patronage.

There's a lot I admire about the design of the building. The exterior tells the story of what is happening inside. The lower Mound is a place where citizens of Boston who have business with the city can enter and interact. Above this is a Ceremonial level with offices for the Mayor and City Council members and a theater-in-the-round Council Chamber that allows for public participation (and its stadium-style risers are visible from the outside). The honeycomb top floors of the building hold offices for city employees or "worker bees."

I've long felt that the popular description of the building as "ugly" is overstate but feel that City Hall fails as a public building in many ways. It's interesting that Sirman often refers to the building as representing transparency and openness whereas I've often felt that the large, concrete block from a distance looks so fortress-like that the message I get is "You can't fight City Hall." Part of the problem is that Kallmann, McKinnell, & Knowles wanted the building to have a beer hall in the basement, and to provide pedestrian access through the building at all hours, even when City Hall was closed. Much of this public access was never realized and increased security over the decades has made the building even more forbidding.

I've also never liked that the opening to the garage faces Faneuil Hall which seems insulting to the existing architecture. I learned from this book that the placement of City Hall was chosen before the design competition when designing City Hall Plaza. I wonder if it might have worked better with City Hall on the other side of the plaza, so the open space would be between City Hall and Faneuil Hall. That being said, the festival marketplace that we know today did not exist when City Hall opened and Sirman makes the case that Mayor Kevin White seeing the derelict Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market from his office window provided the impetus to renovate the area.

Kallmann, McKinnell, & Knowles also intended the building to never be complete with modifications expected over time. Considering the recent renovations at the central Boston Public Library that have revitalized a once-dour building, not to mention recent improvements on City Hall Plaza, I think the interior of City Hall is long overdue for a makeover. Granted, the political will to spend money on a government building that a lot of people don't like is probably not there, but I think it would be worth it.

Favorite Passages:

“To begin with, no accommodations had been made for the twenty thousand working-class families who lived in the neighborhood, and the replacement structures—high-rise condominiums and upscale apartment houses, garages, and sprawling parking lots—were so aesthetically lackluster that they evoked wide-spread nostalgia for the neighborhood they replaced.” – p. 23

“The cumulative effect of the economic, political, and architectural
circumstances in early 1960s Boston was the resounding need for a City Hall that would function not only as a new home for Boston’s municipal government but also as a catalyst for future economic progress and architectural development in the city. The opportunities for the building to effect substantive change were legion.” – p.48

“Rather than hiding these various functions within a unified skin as other entrants had done, KMK pulled them to the outside and accentuated them, in an effort to make them obvious to citizens and also to make the city visible to the public officials working within.” – p. 73

By opting for the KMK design, the jury handed Boston the means by which to make an architectural as well as a political statement about Competition and Construction the city government’s being open, relatable, and forward- thinking. The design depicted Boston as neither beholden to the past nor trapped in the aesthetic abstraction of the present, but instead receptive to a cutting- edge building the likes of which America had never seen before, and which had the opportunity to reshape the field of architectural design. As a Horizon magazine headline aptly proclaimed, ‘Boston Chooses the Future.’” – p. 76-77

Local author William Landay took a different view, maintaining that
City Hall is important precisely because it stands for aspects of Boston’s
culture that some people either do not understand or would rather not
think about, as it represents city government in the metonymical sense:
The poet Robert Lowell wrote that the [Robert Gould] Shaw memorial
[on Boston Common] “sticks like a fishbone / in the city’s throat.” City
Hall sticks in the city’s throat, too. Boston politics— “City Hall” in the
abstract— has always been a little “brutalist.” The building sits atop a
bulldozed neighborhood. And on those “Original Boston City Hall Pavers,”
Ted Landsmark was gored with a flagpole, our own Iwo Jima image.
True Boston: complex, inaccessible, chilly, even fierce. Is it possible
to love such a place and such a building? To find them beautiful because
they are difficult? I do. But then, I’m from Boston. - p. 99

"The question of preserving modern architecture— particularly Brutalist
buildings— presents a peculiar set of challenges. First, there is a
touch of irony in preserving modern buildings. Many of these structures,
after all, were built as part of urban renewal programs that were,
at the time they were constructed, anathema to preservationists. They
stand not only as products but also as symbols of top- down large- scale
urban renewal, which has since been vilified. As such, some of them
still stick in the craw of the preservation community because they
caused wholesale destruction of neighborhoods and historic structures." – p.238