Building outside the box
Preserving a sense of place while modernizing the cityscape is a balancing act that challenges Boston every day.
Boston is often called the most European -- meaning the most traditional -- of American cities. While that may be true, it is also true that we have often been at the cutting edge in architecture.
Charles Bulfinch, who designed the Massachusetts State House (built in 1798), was a national leader in architecture in his day. So, later, was H. H. Richardson, designer of Trinity Church (1877), a building that has seldom, if ever, failed to make any list of the 10 greatest American buildings. So, still later, were the young modern architects like I. M. Pei who poured from the Harvard Design School under the tutelage of Walter Gropius in the mid-20th century.
Boston embodies the paradox of any city: How do you hang onto the past while welcoming the future?
We sometimes get it wrong. A generation or two ago we got too excited about the new and demolished too much of the old. We tore down whole neighborhoods and built some god-awful stuff like the Central Artery, the elevated expressway now being relocated underground by the Big Dig.
Then we reacted violently against that era, adopting a powerful preservation ethic to save what was left of old Boston. But we overdid it a little and became too conservative. New buildings tried to look old, so as to "fit in" to some historic context.
Now that era, too, is ending. We've learned that exciting new buildings can harmonize with the past. We welcome daring designs and the healthy debate they stimulate.
The buildings shown here are a sample of the latest chapter in the story of more than three centuries of good architecture in Boston. 