Page 37 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide 2017 - Boston

BOST ON A T A GLANCE  35

churches than the existing Art Deco tends also to make
sparsely designed “boxes great use of Greco-Roman
with a spire.” Gothic styles, geometric friezes and stylized,
however, were associated vegetable-inspired ornament.
with medieval Catholicism Some Financial District Art
and were unacceptable to Deco buildings also feature
the Protestant heirs of the Italianate interior detail of the Victorian bas-relief murals of historic
Puritans. Richardson’s churches Gibson House Museum and heroic themes. Back Bay
pro vided a pleasing alternative. was once the site of many Art
Often, the building’s main Street and Massachusetts Deco storefronts with stylized
components were massed Avenue reflect a more mature Parisian pilasters and grillwork,
around a central tower, as can synthesis: raised granite but only the former quarters
be seen in Boston’s most entrances, slate-shingled of Shreve, Crump & Low Inc.
important example of the style, mansard roofs, and dormer on Boylston Street (see p98)
Trinity Church (see pp96–7), and bay windows. Nowhere remain intact.
as well as in the First Baptist is the transition from early
Church (see p94). In sharp to late Victorian styles so
contrast to the Boston Granite evident than on the walk
style, which used many similar westward, from the center of
materials and sharp angles, Boston, along Commonwealth
Richardson used stones of Avenue (see p95).
contrasting colors and
rounded off virtually every Art Deco
square edge.
Most of Boston’s Art Deco
buildings are clustered around
Post Office Square in the Modernist interior of the Kresge Chapel,
Financial District, with the built in the 1950s
former Post Office (see p67)
and the Verizon Building (see
p67) being the finest examples. Modernism
Essentially tall buildings of The willing embrace of
light gray granite, they are Modernism at Boston and
Romanesque-style front portico of the constructed with vertical strips Cambridge colleges has
First Baptist Church and slit windows that elongate graced the Boston area with
their forms. Elaborate a wide range of outstanding
geometric steps and surface 20th-century buildings
Victorian ornament on the upper stories where simplicity of form is
Boston’s Victorian style largely help relieve their mass. Boston favored over ornament, and
eschews the pointed Gothic expressive lines grow
lines of English Victorian in out of function. When
favor of French Academic, Bauhaus director Walter
French Empire, and various Gropius fled the Nazis
Italianate influences. The for the safety of Harvard
variations are displayed in an University, he served as
almost chronological march a magnet for some of
of styles in the Back Bay and the mid-century’s great
South End (see pp90–101), designers and architects.
paralleling the decade-by- The range of styles in
decade creation of filled land Boston’s Modernist
in those neighborhoods in buildings is diverse: the
the second half of the 19th poetic sculptural grace
century. Earlier buildings of Eero Saarinen’s Kresge
tend to reflect their stylistic Auditorium and Chapel
influences more accurately; at MIT (see p111); Le
for example, the Italianate Corbusier’s Carpenter
Gibson House Museum (see Center for the Visual Arts
p94) on Beacon Street, which (see p113); and Josep
would have been among Lluis Sert’s International-
the first wave of Back Bay style Smith Campus
develop ment. The later town The Verizon Building, overlooking Post Center, both near Harvard
houses of upper Newbury Office Square Yard (see pp112–13).

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