Former Charles St. jail reborn as Liberty Hotel

When it opens as a luxury hotel next June, the former Charles Street Jail on Cambridge Street in Boston will have a name reflecting what its former occupants longed for: Liberty.

Developer Richard L. Friedman said yesterday he has hired a general manager and sales manager for the hotel and -- following a long and spirited discussion -- decided to call the it The Liberty Hotel.

``It's a Boston kind of name," Friedman, who owns the Charles Hotel in Harvard Square, among other properties. ``The opposite of confinement."

Built in 1851, the old granite jailhouse was an imposing structure that seemed right out of a Dickens novel. It is located on Charles Circle, where the city of Boston is renovating Cambridge Street and the MBTA is improving the Charles/MGH Red Line station.

Because it is a historic structure, the jail must be preserved, and is now being renovated. Meanwhile, a 16-story wing Friedman added has been topped off with steel, and a 22,000-pound cupola was swung into place this month over the jail.

``The cupola was cut out of the original building -- they didn't have enough money," Friedman said. He found early plans for it, though, had one fashioned out of glass and aluminum, and placed it over the dome at the center of the old structure, which is in the shape of a cruciform, or cross.

Friedman said the historic preservation and restoration, overseen by Ann Beha Architects of Boston, has been extensive.

Views outward will be of the Charles River and the Esplanade. ``There will be some bars on windows on the lower floor," said Friedman, and some actual cells will remain.

``You'll know this was a jail," he said.

Project costs have risen about 20 percent, to about $120 million, he said. The project is receiving about $14 million in state and federal tax credits because so much of the building, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is being preserved.

The 300-room Liberty Hotel will be operated by MTM Management LLC of Seattle, founded by Jim Treadway, who Friedman said grew up on Beacon Hill not far from the jail.

Friedman's firm, Carpenter & Co., is developing the hotel with Kennedy Associates Real Estate Counsel LP of Seattle, a pension-fund adviser. The architect is Cambridge Seven Associates Inc., and the interiors are being designed by Alexandra Champalimaud & Associates Inc. of New York.

Friedman said Stuart Meyerson, who formerly ran Hyatt Regency hotels in Cambridge and Newport, R.I., has been hired as general manager. Sean Reardon, formerly director of sales and marketing at the Westin Copley Place hotel, will do marketing.

Thomas C. Palmer Jr. can be reached at tpalmer@globe.com.