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| Scollay Square, Boston, c.1920. Photo courtesy of the Boston Public Library Print Department. |
Scollay Square, Boston, 1920-1962. Always somethin' doin' in these business-bustlin' blocks. Here, soldiers and sailors got prissily pinpricked at a tattoo parlor, sexually soaked at a brothel, tippled and totaled at a tavern, film-fixated at the Olympia, hotdog-hungry at Joe & Nemo's, sensually satiated by Sally Keith at Crawford House, and court-martialed for having abandoned ship too long.
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| Cornhill, Scollay Square, 1962. Photo by Cervin Robinson, Historic American Buildings Survey. |
Here, students and statesmen, councilors and commoners could buy bargain books at the Brattle Book Shop on Cornhill (right), chow down on Chinese cheap-eats at Lun Ting's, take tea at the sign of the Steaming Tea Kettle, purchase prescriptions for pulling all-nighters at Epstein's Drugstore, palaver on politics over Pickwick Ale, talk turkey at The Tasty, and stay out of harlots' way if they could help it.
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| The Old Howard, Scollay Square, early 20th century. |
Elsewhere, newsboys shared the latest scoops at the "Canada Point." William Lloyd Garrison published his anti-slavery newsletter, The Liberator, here in 1831 (and was tarred and feathered for it). Thomas Edison conceived the automatic vote-counter in 1868. Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone here in 1875. The Marx Brothers, Abbott & Costello, and Phil Silvers made pre-movie/TV splashes at the Old Howard (left). Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy browsed through books at the Brattle while at Harvard...
But (no) thanks to 1960s urban renewal frenzy and the impulse to consolidate all government bureaucracies into one nucleus...
...now you don't!
Government Center, Boston, 1969–Present. Always nothin' doin' on this vast, vapid red desert — unless the Big Apple Circus comes to town, the Boston Harborfest Chowderfest tempts the taste buds, the New England Patriots clinch the Super Bowl, oldies concerts bring in the baby-boomers, or Occupy Boston gets the itch to claim another tent turf.
Otherwise, City Hall Plaza is but a cumbersome cut-through to your latté at Faneuil Hall Marketplace, your business meeting at Exchange Place, your gelato in the North End, your Guinness at The Kinsale, your Freedom Trail footwork, or your wonder-wander before you know where you're going.
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| Government Center, Boston, 1973. Photo courtesy of the U.S. National Archives. |
True, master planner I.M. Pei and City Hall architects Kallmann, McKinnell & Knowles tried to solve the latter problem by giving more vista visibility to Faneuil Hall (right), Old North Church (left) and the Custom House Tower (below, right) than Scollay Square had done. But the square itself was too chock-full of history to be worth the sacrifice, especially for...
Now you see it!
...the aggrandization of the New City Hall the plaza rolls out a red carpet to. Hence, as you're just-passin'-thru the plaza, you can't
not notice its namesake giving you the eagle-eye and the eagle wingspread, affirming that you not only can't fight City Hall, but can't banish it from your sight.
Erected in the concrete-brutalist modernism of Le Corbusier's 1957 La Tourette Monastery in Lyon, France (right), City Hall adapted its model's upper-level cantilevering, precast plank columns, variegated fenestration and shadow-sheltered open entrance to express the vigilance of city government over the people it represents yet its democratic accessibility to that citizenry. Protecting yet providing, sheltering yet sharing, overseeing yet open.
Each set of fenestration architecturally expresses a separate division of city government. The large double window over the entrance signifies the Mayor's office, as well as the Mayor's watchful eye over the public. The row of five double windows to the left is the School Committee, and the incrementally cantilevered upper layers of windows are for the larger City Council.
Hall of Fame?
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| City Hall, Boston, 1981. Photo courtesy of the Historic American Buildings Survey |
The splendid acoustics and open public accessibility of City Hall's main lobby made the organist and choirmaster of St. Paul's Cathedral Choir of Men and Boys, of which I was a proud member in the '70s, much obliged to accept Mayor White's invitation to give a Christmas carol concert there — a prime opportunity to pique our prestige in the public eye.
But with fame came fury. We were promised a piano, but waiting for us at centerstage was a cheap little electric organ—without the extension cord needed to turn the organ around so our director could conduct us while playing it. But the City Hall bureaucracy so outlandishly expressed in the architecture couldn't be bothered to do the simple favor of fetching us a cord.
So the organ was relegated to the role of a pitch pipe, and we were forced to sing our entire repertoire
a cappella, which got pretty embarrassing when long passages that cried out for harmony had to be rendered in unison, rendering us amateurish. Which lent credence to that profound proverb from Boston's favorite son, Benjamin Franklin:
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Benjamin Franklin in London, 1767.
Painting by David Martin, displayed in the White House. |
A little neglect breeds mischief:
For want of a nail, the shoe was lost,
For want of a shoe, the horse was lost,
For want of a horse, the rider was lost,
For want of a rider, the battle was lost,
For want of a battle, the kingdom was lost,
And all for want of a horseshoe nail.
For want of The Lost Cord, many chords in our carols were lost, as well as one whole number we had to scrap because it just wasn't feasible without accompaniment. Yet the loss of the accompaniment itself was a mixed blessing, for that organ certainly didn't make the sound our choirmaster would have cared to hear while "seated one day at the organ," as Sir Arthur Sullivan put it in the song after which I named our keyboard's missing link.
Following our act was a young folk group who performed a medley from
Godspell, but nobody was listening, having apparently turned deaf ears to us for our musical mishap. Fame was as fleeting in this Hall as it had been in the Old Howard—as was public accessibility, now sacrificed for post-9/11 security and COVID-19 safety.
How's that for "Now you see it, now you don't"?
And you'll be going on your own space odyssey as you take a ride in a spaceship-like tram car, comfortably equipped with buttock-contoured bucket seats, upward through the innards of the concrete-reinforced steel arch...
