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Boston's Morning Newsletter
Why Boston wants to make City Hall an official landmark
Editor's Note: This is an excerpt from WBUR's daily morning newsletter, WBUR Today. If you like what you read and want it in your inbox, sign up here.
It’s a good week to get outside. Not only are we close to peak foliage across New England, but the weather should be warm and dry through Saturday. (Yes, really, a dry Saturday!)
Check out our Field Guide to Boston for some local fall hiking recommendations. But first, let’s get to the news:
Love it or hate it, Boston City Hall — and its brutalist architecture — may be here to stay. The city’s Landmarks Commission is pushing to designate the monumental concrete building’s exterior and interior main lobby space as an official landmark. It’s a big step toward keeping the iconic, if divisive, 55-year-old building largely the way it looks. And the commission is giving the public an opportunity to weigh in during a public hearing on the proposed plan today.
- Why does it matter? Landmark status basically provides the highest level of protection in the field of historic preservation. City officials say it would protect City Hall from any “physical changes that might compromise its significance and integrity.”
- Why would they want to do that? Not one but two former Boston mayors have floated tearing down City Hall. But in a 52-page report released this month, the Landmarks Commission wrote that it represents a “pivotal moment” in Boston’s architectural history, with a design aimed at bringing government closer to the people. “While popular opinion does not always look favorably on the building, Boston City Hall is architecturally significant as a bold example of Brutalist architecture in a period when steel and glass structures were becoming the standard,” the report said.
- What’s next: The Landmarks Commission will take amendment suggestions at today’s hearing and then draft a final report to vote on at a later time, TBD. If they vote yes, it then needs to get approval from the City Council and the mayor. (Mayor Michelle Wu’s office declined to comment at this point in the process, but she is an unabashed fan of City Hall’s “beautiful” architecture.)
- Go deeper: Landmark status could also provide a “good framework” for managing smaller changes to the aging building, according to the commission. As WBUR’s Walter Wuthmann reported, City Hall is due for $80 million in maintenance, from new piping to energy efficiency updates.
Investigators have identified the man who died yesterday after falling from a high-rise tower in downtown Boston as 40-year-old Nicholas Marks. The East Weymouth resident was washing the windows of a building on Summer Street when he apparently fell.
- The Boston Globe reports at least one of the ropes holding Marks’ platform appeared to have snapped, about 16 stories up. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is leading the investigation into how the incident occurred.
State housing officials are not allowing Milton to change its status as a rapid transit community under the MBTA Communities Act. The new state law requires cities and towns with subway service to rezone at least some nearby land to allow denser housing as of right.
- As the Globe’s Spotlight Team reported last week, Milton’s Planning Board had been arguing that the Mattapan Trolley doesn’t qualify as “rapid transit.” The change in status would have reduced the town’s obligation to zone for new housing, from 2,461 potential units to about 984.
- However, that argument was slapped down yesterday. According to the Boston Business Journal, housing officials told Milton that the Mattapan Trolley is “clearly and unambiguously” considered part of the Red Line, even if it’s super old and sorta separate.
Paging Charlie Baker: The ’90s punk band blink-182 will play Fenway Park next summer as part of their One More Time Tour. Tickets for the July 23 concert will go on sale this Friday at 10 a.m.
P.S.— Come on down to CitySpace tonight for a talk with historian and best-selling author Simon Schama. WBUR’s Gabrielle Emanuel will interview Schama about his new book, “Foreign Bodies: Pandemics, Vaccines and the Health of Nations,” which looks into the tangled and complex history of pandemics and vaccines — and the lessons it holds.
