Page 66 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide 2017 - Boston

64  BOST ON AREA B Y AREA

7 Center Plaza piazzas. Architects I.M. Pei &
Partners re-created some of
Cambridge St. Map 1 C3.
 Government Center. this feeling by surrounding
Boston’s new City Hall with a
Downtown’s old, irregular vast terraced plaza covering
street pattern has given rise 56 acres (23 ha), paved with
to some unusual buildings, 1,800,000 bricks. Its spacious-
including the Center Plaza, ness makes it an ideal venue
which was designed in the for events such as skateboard
mid-1960s by Welton Beckett contests, political and sports
& Associates. It was designed rallies, food fairs, patriotic
specifically to follow the long military marches, and con certs.
curve of the existing Cambridge A remnant of old Boston
Street, and the low-slung office hangs from the Sears Block
complex is often referred to at City Hall Plaza’s Court
as a “skyscraper laid sideways.” Street perimeter. This gilded,
Shops and restaurants run 227-gallon Steaming Tea Kettle
at street level along Center Old-fashioned flower stall on the sidewalk was made for the Oriental
Plaza’s sidewalk arcade, on outside Center Plaza Tea Company by a firm of
the Government Center side, coppersmiths in 1873. Near
while the plaza behind incor- 9 Government New Sudbury Street, the
porates some much older city Center John F. Kennedy Federal Office
center buildings. Building features two pieces
Cambridge, Court, New Sudbury & of abstract art: Dmitry Hadzi’s
Congress Sts. Map 2 D3. 15-ft (4.5-m) high Thermopylae
 Government Center.
sculpture, and Robert
This city center development Motherwell’s New England
was built on the site of what Elegy, a mural recalling the
was once Scollay Square, assassi nation of President
demolished as part of the fad Kennedy in Dallas in 1963.
for local urban renewal that
began in the early 1960s. Some
viewed the development as 0 Blackstone Block
controversial; others did not Union, Hanover, North & Blackstone
lament what was essentially Sts. Map 2 D3.  Government
Curved, Modernist structure of Center a disreputable cluster of saloons, Center, Haymarket.
Plaza, on Cambridge Street burlesque theaters, tattoo
parlors, and scruffy hotels. Cobblestones pave Boston’s
The overall master plan for only surviving web of
8 Boston City Hall Government Center was 17th-century lanes and alley-
inspired by the alfresco vitality ways, a remnant of the
City Hall Plaza. Map 2 D3. Tel (617)
635-4000.  Government Center. and spaciousness of Italian city’s oldest neighborhood.
Open 8:30am–5pm Mon–Fri. 7
∑ ci.boston.ma.us
The firm of architects
Kallmann, McKinnell & Knowles
won a nationwide design
competition for their striking
city hall, a seemingly top-
heavy, cantilevered, Modernist
building. Com pleted in 1968,
the concrete-and-brick City
Hall combines the offices and
services of municipal govern-
ment, with ample space for
holiday-season concerts,
school band and glee-club
performances, and community
art exhibits. An outdoor stage
on City Hall’s north side is
often the venue for evening
rock and pop concerts during
the summer months. Boston City Hall and Government Center, one of Boston’s main focal points

064-065_EW_Boston.indd 64 09/01/17 12:14 pm
Eyewitness Travel LAYERS PRINTED:
Catalogue template “UK” LAYER
(Source v2.7)
Date 1st October 2013
Size 125mm x 217mm