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The Spanish Steps they're not: What led to the new Summer Street staircase in the Seaport
By adamg on Fri, 02/02/2024 - 11:29am
On the Channel considers and reviews the Summer Street Steps and wonders how, with all the billions of public and private dollars poured onto the blank slate that used to be the Seaport, that's what we wound up with - complete with loudspeakers pumping out pop music like some mall in the 1990s.
Stairways are potent symbolic structures, and in the best cases can define and elevate a space to sublime heights. In the original 2017 project plan, WS described their work as being 'modeled conceptually on the Spanish Steps in Rome and other monumental stairs around the world.' If only the execution were as ambitious as the vision: the Summer Street Steps are fine, but a Baroque masterpiece they are not.
With a history of the transformation of the area from train yards to its brief ownership by Rupert Murdoch to what we have today.
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Comments
Those stairs wont get fixed
Those stairs wont get fixed until someone falls through them like what happened at JFK station. Then they will remove the stairs. Problem solved!
The stairs are that bad, too.
The stairs are that bad, too.
Shocker
Absolutely surprising that WS wouldn't deliver on their high-flying inspirations for public space here.
TBD
Well, the (long) blog entry about the Steps certainly doesn't draw any conclusions on whether or not they are a "success".
[T]he Summer Street Steps are already complete by fulfilling their most basic and important function as a set of stairs: to allow for movement from up to down, or down to up. This is an accomplishment. It should be celebrated. But there is much work yet to be done, and it’s too soon to declare the project a resounding success.
Steps qua steps
Yeah, they certainly work as a way to get from A to B by foot, but I think his broader point is that we were promised something just a tad grander, more inspirational than that, and what we have so far is basically the steps down from City Hall Plaza to Congress Street only with a slight glimmer of the water beyond - and that that is where the jury is so far out ...
And yes, I admit it, I just typed "qua" up there in the subject line. Feeling cute, might write a story.
Meh
These steps are way too far east to ever be of use to any pedestrians who are actually trying to go someplace - and as for potential neighborhood users, the immediate vicinity comprises a bunch of cliffs over urban valleys punctuated by the ugly megavent for the tunnel.
Maybe the hope is that some disoriented conference-goers will stumble across the steps and take them down to where the action is, but the Summer Street side of the convention center is extremely intimidating to pedestrians and the path of least resistance on that side will always be the WTC viaduct.
they fill a gap
Further west, there's the A Street Steps.
It would be nice if there also were stairs at <"https://maps.app.goo.gl/nAFHK383JWX2wNwH9">West Service Road Extension, but these steps are only 200 feet east of there. Also that's the least creative street name this side of Silver Line Way.
Yes
You nailed it. 110 percent.
Fantastic.
Fantastic.
more Seaport reviews for something that is half completed...
cant bitch about how its a failure any longer because its the most vibrant/active neighborhood in the City, so lets switch to the stairs that are in an interim condition until the adjacent building is finished.
Overpasses are so 1950s. Let
Overpasses are so 1950s. Let's bring this down to street level.
1950s?
The overpass was built in the 1890s.
I know this will be controversial, but I like that overpass. Brings character to the area. It's part of what makes the greater Fort Point Channel area special.
all overpasses were built in 1958
That's the joke.
If more than four steps are required
Just install an escalator ...
WS Steps
Something tells me the steps that WS has planned for its Fenway development will follow a similar trajectory..
(pg 20 & 27)
https://bpda.app.box.com/s/dtc7l6a76u135eempfqxog86ag9i1ox2
Always good for a chuckle
Developers and their grandiose self-important ideas are always good for a chuckle. Imagine a developer thinking they could create something as iconic as the Spanish Steps in that windswept soulless wasteland.
it just takes money
Building nice things takes skill and art but mostly it just requires money.
The classic shuck-and-jive is that the renderings for project approval imagine a New Atlantis: Beautiful materials, costly sculptural facades, grand setbacks that leave millions of dollars of square footage on the table, and then as the project continues, they're pulled out one by one due to "necessity," until you're left with the difference between the burger in the ad and the limp excuse on your tray.
The thing is, this has happened so many times, it should be obvious by now that *it's the playbook*. The question is why BPDA et. al. go along with the farce.