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Developer proposes turning South End technical school into nursing home, affordable housing, offices
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Comments
a treasure at risk
The concert hall in that property is a true architectural treasure. It would be a shame to lose it. Related Beal is a good developer. Perhaps they will recognize the need to handle such a treasure with requisite sensitivity. One can dream.
There's a concert hall? I
There's a concert hall? I worked there for two years and didn't know that. I don't think the school had a program in music or theater.
I didn't know either but apparently..
Highlights of interior spaces include an auditorium, a one-third replica of Boston Symphony Hall that can be easily transformed into a ballroom and the historical lobby resplendent with its marble floor, wrought iron entrance way and original Charles Mills murals.
Half scale Symphony Hall
The concert hall was by the same designer, using the same template of Symphony Hall. It is also nearly as acoustically perfect. Many groups, including the BSO, have used it as a stand-in for recordings and rehearsals.
If it's not protected as a landmark, it should be.
Sabine?
The same acoustical designer, Wallace Clement Sabine? He invented architectural acoustics, and the Boston Symphony hired him to consult on the building of their new hall. It was the first concert hall designed using scientific acoustic principles, and, weirdly, has not been since surpassed. The first was the best, apparently. I had no idea he had designed another concert hall in Boston. It should be preserved at all cost.
Sabine wasn't an architect, but a junior physics lecturer at Harvard, who was assigned the thankless task of figuring why one lecture hall - Sanders Theatre - was so good, and another, in the Fogg Museum, was so lousy. He succeeded, and a new science was born.
Crazy
I really had no idea there was a concert hall there. Sounds great. I hope they save it.
Yeah
Related Beal is a good developer, they already own/manage tons of properties around the city so they aren't in it to make quick cash (hence why its going to have affordable and senior housing).
The concert hall would be wonderful community arts place.
The concert hall is amazing.
It absolutely should be protected.
Question about concert hall
Who used it? Was it only rented out for closed rehearsals and recordings, or were there public concerts in it?
I attended a public concert there.
About two years ago. The acoustics were perfect and the space is beautiful and in excellent shape. It’s a small concert hall. No seats too far from the stage.
Does This Mean....
The world's most useless piece of grass on the southerly side of the property gets filled in with a building? One can only hope.
There is open space and then there is open space. Remnant parcels left over from when the BRA carpet bombed the South End could be put to better use in an urban environmental context than an a patch of grass the size of a lawn on a Cape in East Arlington.
Let's hope.
Accursed green space!
Quick, put a CVS there and all will be right with the world.
Of course...
The students who've attended there over the years should not have an even postage size green space on their urban campus.
You Make It Sound Like It Was A Park
It has been fenced off for decades and can't be accessed from the buildings. It wasn't used.
You make it sound like kids were denied CADD instruction under a group of red maples on a nice spring day by that really cool teacher.
Don't comment for the sake of saying something unless you know what you are talking about. Your rebuttal for the sake of rebuttal is childlike. Try harder next time.
Aesthetic appeal
Is forever cancelled.
Crappy Design
Is endorsed by you.
Is the important point whether or not you yourself can use it?
Because it seems to be.
What are taking about it hasn’t been used?!!
Part of it is used as a Christmas tree lot every December. Events are held there. The other part is used year round for outdoor seating for students and staff, to study, to eat meals or do whatever.
It certainly does serve a purpose for the songbirds and other wildlife that live there. It’s a green space that helps keep the city cool in summer and that provides other environmental benefits just like other green pockets about the city. It’s a lovely quiet spot to stroll by and enjoyed by many in the neighborhood.
That spot certainly must be coveted by greedy developers ready to plonk down another architectural atrocity like so many they’ve littered the city with. But they must not be allowed to do so.
If You Are So Concerned About Open Space Then
Go across the street and take away all three heat grabbing parking lots in Castle Square. You know the 200+ space open space parking area in the middle of one of the densest neighborhoods in the city.
There is "open space" and good urban design. That park is poor urban design. Castle Square tenants having parking spaces when the retail price of a parking spot in the South End is worth as much as a house is parts of Brockton might be the thing to worry about over some small blades of grass.
PS - Wildlife? Really? Is that what pigeons and squirrels are called now? Wildlife?
Don't hurt your back
I hope you got some help, moving those goalposts all over the place.
Um...
I think they want to preserve the building, not the fence and the grass.
Fencing can be removed or replaced with something more elegant and the sod can be replaced or supplemented with plantings.
Or did you not realize that?
WTF?
Sounds good
I know these descriptions are always full of lies, but this one sounds respectful of the building's history and importance.
BTW, as always, thanks for the history lesson Adam!
Benjamin Franklin would be proud if done right.
“The essence of Franklin is that he was a civic- minded man. He cared more about public behavior than inner piety, and he was more interested in building the City of Man than the city of God. He believed that benevolence was the binding virtue of society.”
( Walter Isaacson; page 102 in Franklin biography)
Build it asap
Build it asap
If you would like to look
If you would like to look into a crystal ball to see what will happen to this institution, just check out what happened to the now defunct NDEC which used to occupy a prime parcel on west broadway in south Boston. Someone inside franklin institute is making a mint from this.
What's so great about turning a technical school into a nursing
home, or whatever? Technical schools are necessary, because not all kids are cut out for an academic education. There are kids who do better at trade schools and are better off learning a trade, such as construction, being a plumber, auto mechanic, craftsperson, or an electrician, or even a chef, for instance. Also, there's always been the need for people in the trades, and always will be. Moreover, many, if not most of the male-dominated trades are being entered by females, which is also a great sign.
Sure, it's good to use one's brains, but the trades are nothing to sneer at, either.
tech school will survive
Agree, but I'm Pretty sure BFIT is moving to Roxbury Crossing, not closing.
The housing/ nursing home / office combo sounds good. Better than just more luxury condos, and a different than most recent SE construction.
Harrison Supply
You did see the link above that they are moving to the old Harrison Supply site between Melnea Cass and Dudley Street on Harrison Avenue, right?
If anything the school will have a lot more room to serve more students.