Downtown Boston Business Improvement District home tour

Downtown Boston is booming with new residential construction that will add hundreds of new apartments and condominiums to an area that has already seen a doubling of its residential population in just a decade.

The Downtown Boston Business Improvement District will host a tour of downtown homes this Saturday, May 11, but representatives of the BID gave Boston.com a sneak preview.

Historic Boston Incorporated has renovated the circa-1875 Hayden Building and turned the upper four floors into apartments. The units vary from 910 – 945 square feet and share the same basic layout, but each has its own unique details, including a different arrangement of windows on each floor. The fourth-floor apartment has been rented, but the others are currently available.

The fifth floor of the Hayden Building is dominated by a row of windows that runs along two sides. Designed by famed architect Henry Hobson Richardson, who also designed Trinity Church in Copley Square, the stately building at Washington and LaGrange streets is his only remaining commercial building in Boston.

Historic Boston expects LEED Silver certification for the Hayden Building.

Across LaGrange from the Hayden Building on Washington Street between the Theater District and Chinatown is the Kensington, an apartment building that is still under construction but is scheduled to accept its first tenants in early August. Here, a tour group stands in an unfinished space that will become the lobby’s rotunda.

Because construction is ongoing, participants in the home tour will not be able to enter the Kensington, but they will be able to see some of its features across the street at the leasing office on the first floor of the Hayden Building.

On an upper floor inside the Kensington, one of two kitchen designs is visible. The kitchen color schemes alternate every two floors in the 27-story building, which has a total of 381 units. The building features one- and two-bedroom apartments, as well as “open one-bedrooms’’—studio apartments with windowless bedrooms separated by 7-foot-high walls and glass doors to let in light.

A view through an eighth-floor window shows the outdoor pool area on the Kensington’s sixth floor, which will also include a fitness center, an entertainment kitchen, a billiard room, an “e-lounge’’ for computer use, a solarium, a study room, and a “quiet zone’’ where cell phone calls are forbidden.

J. Ralph Cole, the Kensington Investment Company’s executive vice president for special projects, describes the building as he looks down from the 27th and top floor of the Kensington. Cole said he expects many renters in the building will be young professionals who appreciate the downtown location.

From the 27th floor of the Kensington, one looks over the Theater District and past the W Hotel, at left, toward the Back Bay and both the old and new Hancock Towers.

Units in the building will rent for between $3,000 and $4,000 a month, depending on its size, location, and view. “Basically every individual unit has a separate price,’’ based on those factors, said Harold E. Nash, president of the Kensington Investment Company’s real estate group.

One of the few occupied units included in the tour is condominium inside the Grandview on Tremont Street that is owned by Chris Meyer and Mary Rivet. The two have been married for 25 years and are empty-nesters who moved back to downtown Boston from Lexington after their daughter went away to college.

Rivet and Meyer bought their home in the Grandview in 2010, lived there for a year, and then moved out for a six-month renovation that took out a wall and created a large, open living/dining/kitchen area, seen here.

Meyer said it wasn’t difficult living downtown after years in Lexington. “I grew up in Manhattan, and this is about as close as you’re going to get in Boston,’’ he said.

Rivet and Meyer’s unit includes a patio area overlooking Boston Common that is large enough to include both a sitting area and a dining space. The only problem, Meyer said, is the wind that blows across the Common and then becomes funneled into this narrow space between two tall buildings. “It’s our own little Hancock Tower,’’ Meyer said of the wind-tunnel effect.

The Downtown Home Tour will include several units inside 45 Province, right behind the new downtown Walgreen’s. Wayne Lopez, its sales and marketing director, said this condominium building includes 137 units on 33 floors, with more than 85 different floor plans so that many units are unique in their layout. Opened in 2010, the building is about 85 percent sold, but there are still some desirable units available.

This unit on the 22nd floor of 45 Province, seen looking across the kitchen peninsula through a living and dining area, is available for an asking price of $1.65 million. It includes a small front bedroom, seen through the large doorway at left, a larger bedroom in the back, and a small balcony overlooking Downtown Crossing. Lopez said prices on these units vary considerably based on the size and amenities.

Another 22nd-floor unit at 45 Province lacks a balcony and is available for $1.6 million. The luxury building includes a fitness center, a spa, and such unexpected amenities as a Montessori school. Lopez said residents range from young parents and single people to middle-aged couples and empty-nesters.

Decorators have staged this room inside a three-bedroom unit on the 24th floor of 45 Province with two twin beds, perhaps for two young children. The building includes about 25 units with three or more bedrooms for families. This unit is available for $2.5 million.

This view shows the master bedroom inside the three-bedroom unit on the 24th floor of 45 Province. The spacious master suite includes a large bathroom with two sinks and a walk-in closet as large as the bedrooms of many local college students.

An approximately 3,300-square foot unit that stretches across the 24th and 25th floors offers panoramic views of Greater Boston on three sides, including this view that looks across the roof of the Rosalie K. Stahl Center at Suffolk University to the Massachusetts State House beyond. The unit is priced at $4.39 million, Lopez said.

Another view from a 25th-floor balcony outside the two-floor unit looks over Government Center, with the old Boston City Hall, at bottom right, the current City Hall at center-right, and the John Fitzgerald Kennedy Federal Building at upper left.

The Downtown Home Tour hosted by the Downtown Boston Business Improvement District will feature homes in other downtown buildings, including a model unit outside the still under-construction Millennium Place, seen here, as well as the Archstone Boston Common, the Devonshire, the Edison, and 37 Temple Place.

For more information about the home tour, click here.