Designed by architect Chester Lindsay Churchill, the Mapparium features 608 stained glass panels. / Photograph courtesy of the Mary Baker Eddy Library

Of all the things Mary Baker Eddy accomplished in her life, her role in shaping Boston’s cityscape is often overlooked. Neither a designer nor an architect, the founder of Christian Science was the driving force behind the construction of two impressive structures: the 1894 Romanesque First Church of Christ, Scientist, and the 1934 neoclassical headquarters of the Christian Science Publishing Society, completed after her death. Together, these buildings anchor the I. M. Pei & Partners–designed Christian Science Plaza, one of the most majestic spaces in Boston, famous for its sweeping vistas and vast reflecting pool.

And hidden inside the publishing society headquarters is another wonder: a three-story-tall, 30-foot-wide globe constructed of bronze and 608 stained glass panels. Known as the Mapparium, the globe was the brainchild of Boston architect Chester Lindsay Churchill.

Churchill was charged with creating a home for Eddy’s various publications, including the Pulitzer Prize–winning Christian Science Monitor. She had launched the internationally focused newspaper in 1908 in response to the rampant tabloid journalism of the day, encouraging her editors to promote objective reporting over sensationalism—in Eddy’s words, “to injure no man, but to bless all mankind.”

To prepare for this project, Churchill traveled to the New York Daily News, where visitors to Raymond Hood’s skyscraper were awed by a 12-foot-diameter solid globe that continually spun on its axis in the center of the lobby. Churchill proposed installing a similar attraction in the publishing society’s headquarters. But his would be different: In an effort to complement Eddy’s mission of transparency and global perspective, not only would the project be significantly larger than its New York counterpart, it would be made of glass, allowing visitors to view the world from inside it.

Churchill’s proposal required an impressive crew of engineers and artisans. Craftspeople at New York–based Rambusch Company spent the better part of a year hand-tracing sections of a 1934 Rand McNally world map onto thick glass panels imported from the Hope Glass Company in England. The panels were then kiln-fired in special cradles to preserve their unique curves. A circular bronze frame was fashioned to hold the panels, accented by hundreds of light bulbs. A glass bridge was then installed through the middle of the globe.

After three years of design and construction, the Mapparium opened to the public on May 31, 1935. It was an instant hit, attracting more than 50,000 visitors in the first four months. Though updates to the map have been considered throughout its 80-year history, the Mapparium still shows the world as it was in 1934, capturing a moment when Vietnam was still a part of French Indochina and colonial powers governed Africa.

The Mapparium may be frozen in time, but Boston continues to evolve around it, and the Christian Science Plaza is not immune to demands for greater height and density. This year, for the first time in four decades, there is major construction on the property: Two new skyscrapers are being erected on its northern corner—an apartment/retail building and a 699-foot luxury hotel/condo tower. Meanwhile, visitors continue to gaze from within the great glass globe, where Alaska will always remain a territory and the Soviet Union will continue to dominate Europe and Asia.

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Designed by architect Robert Peabody, the Custom House Tower was once the tallest building around. / Photograph courtesy of the Boston Public Library/Flickr

As Boston undergoes its biggest building boom in generations, it seems only natural to pay tribute to the city’s original—and arguably most beautiful—skyscraper, the Custom House Tower. This Classical Revival–style, 16-story building in McKinley Square has dominated the skyline since its completion in 1915. The tower’s copper-sheathed couplet windows, illuminated observation deck, and 22-foot-wide marble-and-bronze clocks on each of its four sides have been admired by architecture buffs for generations.

It’s amusing to think that Boston’s first tower was built as an addition. The original U.S. Custom House, completed in 1847 of granite from Quincy’s Pine Hill quarry, was a monumental neoclassical edifice designed by Ammi Burnham Young, who borrowed heavily from classic Greek temple architecture. Thirty-two fluted Doric columns, each weighing 42 tons, wrapped its exterior; inside, a grand rotunda, finished with Berkshire County white marble, featured 12 thick, 29-foot-high Corinthian columns supporting a skylit dome.

By the early 20th century, the government had outgrown its building. In response, Robert Peabody, a New Bedford native and partner in the prestigious architecture firm Peabody & Stearns, proposed constructing a new tower above the rotunda. Inspired by the campanile at Saint Mark’s Square in Venice, Peabody’s tower would symbolize Boston’s status as one of the country’s leading port cities.

City zoning codes capped the height of new structures at 125 feet at the time of construction. But because the federal government owned and occupied the property, the Custom House Tower was permitted to rise to an unprecedented 495 feet, solidifying its status as Boston’s first skyscraper and tallest building—a title it maintained until the completion of the Prudential Tower in 1964.

It took three years for Norcross Brothers of Worcester, the general contracting team behind Trinity Church in Copley Square and the New York Public Library, to build the granite-clad tower. To carry the load, they fashioned eight steel columns supported by trusses around the dome. The Corinthian columns that once held up the dome were removed and reassembled at the Franklin Park Zoo, where they still stand today. An iron cap, later recast in stainless steel, topped off the tower and originally served as an exhaust for the heating system.

Over the years, the Custom House was home to numerous government agencies, from customs to the Fish and Wildlife Service. It was vacated in 1986 and was bought by the city a year later, but it remained unused until it was reopened as a Marriott timeshare hotel in 1997.

Although it’s been decades since the Custom House Tower reigned supreme as Boston’s tallest building, it will always stand as a reminder of a time when architecture was beautifully handcrafted and ambitiously conceived.

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A band performs for a crowd in preparation for a Fourth of July celebration in 1912. / Photograph courtesy of Martha’s Vineyard Preservation Trust Archives

In this tech-crazy age, when children would rather play with iPhones than play tag outside, people of all ages still line up for five-minute rides—and the chance to snag a coveted brass ring—aboard the Flying Horses carousel in Oak Bluffs.

Brought to the Vineyard after an eight-year stint on Coney Island, the Flying Horses is the country’s oldest operating platform carousel. It was built in 1876 by Charles Dare, a talented New York toy maker renowned for his contributions to early carousel manufacturing. Housed in a red-shingled barn, the Flying Horses—dubbed a National Historic Landmark in 1986—features 20 stationary wooden horses and four double-seated chariots, all carved by hand and fastened to the carousel’s 36-foot-wide platform. Etched glass-marble eyes and authentic horsehair manes and tails originally accented the horses; the chariots, meanwhile, were modeled after birds, dragons, and snakes. Dare’s craftsmanship was complemented by a series of 19th-century folk art paintings on the carousel’s center panels. These artworks were hidden for years by layers of paint; restoration efforts in the 1970s revealed images including a Hudson River steamboat and a racehorse—remnants of the carousel’s New York roots.

Aside from its impressive artistry, the carousel’s most popular feature (at least in the eyes of its riders) is its ring arm. Composed of metal sidewalls and a sprung-steel lip, the arm—manned by a steadfast attendant—supplies a steady stream of rings, which riders try to grab as they pass by. Those lucky enough to snatch a rare brass ring earn a free ride—and plenty of bragging rights. “It’s the high point of an island summer,” says Christopher Scott, president of the Martha’s Vineyard Preservation Trust, which acquired the carousel in the 1980s. “We frequently get photos showing a child’s first ride, with their parents and grandparents there to witness the event.”

A modern photo of the carousel’s interior. / Photograph by Roland Hopkins

Since landing in Oak Bluffs in 1889, the Flying Horses has been managed by a slew of proprietors, some of whom have revamped aspects of its functionality and appearance. William Davis, who allegedly acquired the carousel as payment for a debt, updated its power system from steam to electric in 1900. Nearly a century later, the Martha’s Vineyard Preservation Trust hired North Carolina artist Rosa Ragan to repaint and enhance the whimsical horses and chariots. The trust also replaced an old tape deck—itself a makeshift substitute for the original calliope—with a 700-pound automatic organ, which plays 12 songs on repeat.

The Flying Horses has seen its share of changes since its 19th-century debut, but its appeal to patrons both young and old remains the same. After all this time, Scott says the carousel—traditionally in operation from Easter through Labor Day—still provides upward of 300,000 rides a year. “For visitors and summer residents, a visit to the carousel is an irreplaceable part of the Vineyard experience,” he says.

A vintage photo of the carousel’s interior. / Photograph courtesy of Martha’s Vineyard Preservation Trust Archives

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The interior of the Back Bay’s Gibson House reveals how Boston’s wealthiest denizens (and their servants) lived and worked during the Victorian era. / Photograph by John Woolf

Walking along Beacon Street in the Back Bay, you might not notice anything special about house number 137, located just a block from the Public Garden. But inside, this residence turned museum, where nothing has been altered since 1954, offers a rare glimpse of Boston’s golden age.

Built in 1860 by Catherine Hammond Gibson for her son, Charles Sr., the Gibson House occupies the second lot developed after Boston began filling in marshland to create the Back Bay neighborhood. Over the next 40 years, the public works project would yield 570 acres of land, on which many of Boston’s most affluent families built their homes.

This house was designed by Edward Clarke Cabot, the architect behind the Boston Athenaeum, and features the eastern and western motifs that were all the rage during the Victorian era. From the French mansard slate roof and Italianate brownstone arches around the windows to the foyer’s gilded “Japanese Leather” wallpaper (embossed paper, added in 1888 by Charles Sr.’s wife, Rosamond, a member of the prominent Crowninshield family of merchants), the Gibson House is considered an exemplar of 19th-century Boston residential design.

Photograph by Mary Prince

Unlike other townhouses of the era, the entrance is centered on the façade. On the other side of the heavy carved walnut double doors is a spacious foyer with high ceilings crowned by a multistory ventilation shaft—a Victorian innovation that served to draw warm air up to all parts of the home while providing natural light from its skylight. Beyond is the dining room, featuring a grand mahogany table. A majestic curving black walnut staircase leads to a landing, where a copy of Gilbert Stuart’s famous painting of George Washington at Dorchester Heights hangs, along with many other works in heavy gilded frames.

Designed for entertaining guests following lunch or dinner, the second floor is divided into men’s and women’s areas, including a paneled library where Charles Sr. conducted business for his cotton brokerage. Family portraits, lamps, tables, and wall-to-wall carpeting abound, just as they did during the home’s heyday. The third floor contains two bedrooms connected by a bathroom with plumbing that was last updated in 1902. The larger bedroom boasts a 15-piece bedroom set built of bird’s-eye maple.

A network of narrow hallways leads to the servant’s kitchen, where a side door opens onto one of the Back Bay’s many public alleys, through which deliveries were received. Servants would also use this route as their entryway.

Photograph by Mary Prince

The preservation of the house was the vision of the eccentric Charles Gibson Jr., who lived there with his mother after his father, Charles Sr., died in 1916. As he watched the neighborhood decline during the 1930s following the Depression and his mother’s death, Charles Jr. tried to maintain the appearance of lost Boston opulence, dining regularly at the Ritz-Carlton in top hat and tails into the 1950s. Perhaps to honor his mother and Boston’s fading Brahmin heritage, he was determined to safeguard every aspect of his family home, forcing his guests to eat in the stairwell so as not to disrupt the dining room that, to this day, is set with Haviland Limoges china, as his mother left it.

Today, the property is overseen by the Gibson Society, which Charles Jr. founded for that purpose before his death, in 1954.

Charles Gibson Jr. / Photograph courtesy of the Gibson House Museum

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One of the city’s few great examples of Beaux-Arts architecture, the renovated Cutler Majestic Theatre is enjoying a vibrant second act. / Photograph by Bruce T. Martin

Modern-day theater-goers marveling at the Cutler Majestic have the unique pleasure of seeing it just as Isabella Stewart Gardner would have when she attended the theater’s opening night in 1903. Before the curtain rose for the musical comedy The Storks, Gardner would have observed the same elaborate details of the Edenlike atmosphere, including the theater’s ceiling, designed to resemble a heavenly trellis with patches of blue sky.

The Cutler Majestic Theatre is the work of architect John Galen Howard, one of the few Americans to attend Paris’s L’Ecole des Beaux-Arts in the late 1800s. The Chelmsford native decked out his only known Boston work with all the classical references that characterize the Beaux-Arts style. As such, it is one of the city’s few great examples of Beaux-Arts architecture, along with the Boston Public Library and South Station. Today, a signature green placard near the building’s entrance announces its significance as a Boston Historic Landmark.

The 1,186-seat theater was commissioned by Eben Dyer Jordan, son of the founder of the Jordan Marsh department store empire, who was an active patron of Boston’s arts institutions. Just three years after opening it, Jordan sold it to the Shubert brothers—then the region’s premier theater operators, who ran everything from boxing matches to vaudeville shows there until 1956, when Sack Theaters converted it into a movie theater.

A photo of the Cutler in the early 1900s.

When it was built, the Majestic was the first theater in Boston to include electric lighting from the outset; other theaters had be retrofitted from gas to electric. Clearly fascinated with this “safe” source of illumination, Howard integrated the electric light bulb into his design, intertwining strings of bulbs with plaster grapevines along the ceiling’s trellis design, lining balconies, and highlighting the theater’s arches. Some 4,500 bulbs give the interior a fantastic glow.

On the exterior, hundreds of additional bulbs mounted in rosettes once lined the carved terra cotta arches as well. “[The façade] is part of creating this sense of arrival, this sense of grandeur,” says architectural historian Amy Finstein, who lectures at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. “When people saw the theater, suddenly they thought, ‘Whoa, this is bigger than me.’ They [knew that they had] arrived at someplace important.”

Three additional arches frame a trio of Tiffany stained-glass windows flanked by fluted ionic columns. The theater’s splendor is further accentuated by intricate stone carvings of fruit atop each window, surrounding three theater masks depicting happiness, sadness, and anger.

From the beginning, the Majestic has been heralded for its impeccable acoustics. Whether ticket holders pay top dollar (for seats like Gardner’s) or retreat to the balcony, they enjoy crystal-clear sound, thanks in part to the auditorium’s inverted bowl shape. Curving both out and up from the stage, it carries sound evenly across the space. Cantilevered balconies, another innovation, allow for unobstructed stage views from every seat in the house.

Gilded decorative plaster and rich handcrafted accents abound, which earned the theater the nickname “House of Gold” early on. The lobby is adorned in a reddish-orange faux marble called scagliola, as well as murals by William de Leftwich Dodge, an artist known for his work in the Library of Congress and the Boston Public Library.

The theater was saved from the wrecking ball by Emerson College in 1983; five years later, the college launched a $14.8 million restoration project. Reopened in 1989, it was eventually renamed the Cutler Majestic in honor of Ted and Joan Cutler. The Cutlers funded the final phases of the project, overseen by Elkus Manfredi Architects and unveiled in 2003. The theater’s marquee is one of the only parts of the building not originally drafted by Howard.

To enjoy a truly authentic experience, book a seat in rows C or D of the center balcony. Made up of original seats from the orchestra level, they include a small hook and rack below—once used to hold canes and top hats. The Cutler is much the same today as it was a century ago—Mrs. Gardner likely wouldn’t spot a difference.

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Atop Prospect Hill tower flies the Grand Union Flag, considered to be America’s first flag. George Washington raised the banner on the hill on New Year’s Day in 1776. / Photograph by Eric Kilby/Flickr

With its massive stonework, crenellations, and iron gates, the four-story tower atop Prospect Hill in Somerville looks like the remnants of a medieval fortress. And that’s no accident. Known as the Prospect Hill Memorial Flag Tower and Observatory, it was built in 1903 to commemorate the site’s military importance during the Revolutionary and Civil wars.

Before pieces of Prospect Hill were leveled off in 1872 to fill in parts of present-day Union Square, it served as a strategic post. It was here that revolutionaries constructed a fort known as the Citadel, which endured British attacks throughout the Siege of Boston. Its location served the revolution well: Soldiers positioned there were able to swiftly come to the aid of troops embroiled in such skirmishes as the Battle of Bunker Hill. It was later used as a training camp during the Civil War, with the surrounding neighborhood renamed “Union Square” in a fit of patriotism.

After that, its history was all but forgotten until the turn of the 20th century, when Somerville joined the City Beautiful Movement—a national effort to enhance the urban landscape by introducing grand structures, monuments, and parks. To commemorate Prospect Hill’s former military importance, Somerville enlisted its city engineer, Ernest W. Bailey, to design both a monument and the surrounding green space. The resulting Gothic-style structure is made of Deer Isle granite, and is accessed by a set of steps along Munroe Street. Concrete retaining walls were added in the 1960s, but decades later, the tower risked collapsing. Using $500,000 in funding from the Community Preservation Act, the city of Somerville replaced upper-level floor slabs, reset parapet stones, restored doors and ornamental iron stairs, and repaired the exterior stairwell while keeping most of the tower’s original design intact. Construction was completed in December 2015.

A photo of the tower in the early 20th century. / Collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society, from Haskell’s Historical Guidebook of Somerville (inset)

Over the following months, the city worked to make the tower more accessible to all, eventually offering tours for the first time in years. In the fall of 2016, volunteer guides led select visits, with docents stationed around the monument to reveal tidbits about the history of Prospect Hill. This spring, climbing tours will begin operating on a regular schedule. The city also commissioned the creation of a virtual experience for those unable to climb the tower’s narrow, winding stairs. Whether in person or via a smart device, curiosity seekers can enjoy taking in panoramic views of the Boston skyline even more spectacular than the ones already visible from the park at the base of the tower.

In addition to stunning vistas and architecture, there’s something else that stops many visitors in their tracks: Eagle-eyed viewers will notice that the billowing banner atop the tower doesn’t look right. Bare of stars, this flag features a red-and-white striped design sporting a British Union Jack symbol in its corner. “Sometimes people will call up and say, ‘My gosh! What’s the matter with the flag that you’re flying up there? It’s the wrong flag!’” says J. Brandon Wilson, executive director of the Somerville Historic Preservation Commission.

In fact, this unusual emblem has a special connection to Prospect Hill. It was this flag—a version that predates Betsy Ross’s landmark stars-and-stripes design—that first represented the soon-to-be United States. To boost morale during the Revolutionary War, General George Washington asked Congress to create a new national flag—one that symbolized unity among the colonies in defiance of the British. The result was the Grand Union Flag, which Washington himself hoisted over the ramparts of the Prospect Hill tower on January 1, 1776. In tribute, Somerville continues to fly it to this day.

“This is a quirky, fun, little, beautiful place, and the history’s so important,” says Community Preservation Act manager Kristen Stelljes, adding that the restoration of the Prospect Hill tower has catalyzed enthusiasm around the iconic Somerville landmark. “A lot of the images and logos and tchotchkes you get show Prospect Hill tower on it,” she says. “It’s such an important part of Somerville that wasn’t accessible, and a lot of people really felt that.”

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This little red shack on Cape Ann has been widely reproduced—in more ways than one. / Photograph by Robert Linsdell/Flickr

The instantly recognizable fishing shack at the end of Bradley Wharf in Rockport doesn’t claim historical significance. No famous architect built it, nor is it any special feat of engineering. Yet this humble red shack—known as Motif No. 1—is thought to be the most-painted building in the world.

Erected in the 1880s as a utilitarian shed, the simple 1,008-square-foot wooden structure served as a storage space for lobstermen and fishermen. On the first floor, seafarers stocked their bait, lines, and other supplies, and mended their nets. A fish broker’s office occupied the partial second story above.

But the mundane post-and-beam fishing shack became something more when it caught the eye of painters in Cape Ann’s burgeoning artists’ colony. Starting in the 1920s, plein air artists were drawn to the shabby wooden hut. Amateurs and masters created their own fishing-shack masterpieces—much to the vexation of a local art teacher named Lester Hornby.

A painter who summered in Rockport and wintered in Paris, Hornby taught art on both sides of the Atlantic, instructing his pupils to take inspiration from local scenery. He found that his Parisian students tended to tackle a variety of different subjects, or motifs. But in Rockport, there was only one: that red shack. Legend has it that one day, after receiving yet another rendition of the oft-repeated image, a frustrated Hornby snapped: “What? ‘Motif No. 1’ again!” Supposedly, the nickname stuck with the building ever since.

This possibly apocryphal mockery didn’t do much to scale back the floods of fishing-shack art. In fact, it buoyed Motif No. 1 (pronounced “motive” by locals) to new heights of artistic cliché. In the 1930s, one artist even bought the building to use as his personal studio. A few years later, a parade-float likeness of the shack made its way into the Chicago World’s Fair. Its popularity with visitors and locals alike warranted postcards and calendars, in addition to the sea of homemade watercolors.

In light of its ever-growing popularity, Rockport city officials resolved to preserve the inspirational magic of Motif No. 1. In 1945 the town bought the shack and designated it to honor Rockport’s military members. That move cemented the quaint little shack’s status as an indelible symbol of coastal Massachusetts, immortalized on book jackets and posters touting the region. Today, you can step foot inside any gift shop even remotely near Essex County and see the shack plastered on mugs, magnets, and shot glasses. Tourists still flock to see it—despite the fact that there’s nothing terribly remarkable about the building.

“It certainly wasn’t a unique structure,” says L.M. Vincent, author of the 2011 book In Search of Motif No. 1. Then how does he explain its extraordinary fame? “I looked at where the other fish shacks were, and from an artist’s point of view you either didn’t have access, or you didn’t have the background, or you had a big ugly building in the way,” he says. “So that location, just sort of sticking out like a sore red thumb, is really what made it special.”

And even that was a fluke. According to Vincent, the iconic color of this no-frills building wasn’t meant as decoration—rather, it was probably a case of Yankee thrift. “Historically, oils such as linseed could be mixed with pigment derived from clay, flaxseed, cattle blood, or plain old rust (ferrous oxide) to make a reddish color,” he writes. “Iron oxides for red paint were relatively cheap, so a shade of red was the most economical color, if you weren’t picky about the exact hue.”

Decades later, artists continue to render Motif No. 1 on canvasses daily—but while the scene’s rustic charm is as genuine as ever, the landmark itself is not. Yes, the building sitting at the edge of the wharf is a fake. The original Motif No. 1 met its untimely end in the Blizzard of ’78, walloped to red smithereens by wind and waves. Even before the storm died down, Rockport residents gathered near the wharf to pay their respects, vowing to rebuild. By October 1978, they’d finished a perfect replica, dangling buoys and all, based on measurements from the 1938 Historic American Buildings Survey.

Inauthentic as it may be, the little red shack that stands today hasn’t lost a shred of its New England credibility. Indeed, perhaps it’s only fitting that a building that’s been imitated thousands of times on paper should receive its very own reproduction.

Artist Anthony Thieme paints Motif No. 1 in the mid-1900s. / Photograph courtesy of the Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection

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The building’s grand staircase leads to a sloping center plaza. / Photograph by Julia Hopkins

The Erich Lindemann Mental Health Center is a hulking, overlooked mass of concrete that’s part of an incomplete building complex. It’s also a stunning achievement of one of the 20th century’s most renowned Modernist architects.

Designed by Paul Rudolph in 1962 and completed in 1971, the Brutalist creation is a decidedly imposing presence just a few blocks from City Hall—one that would have been dwarfed by a much larger Brutalist tower, if all had gone according to plan.

The cement behemoths spawned from Boston’s wave of midcentury urban renewal were “built with the kind of grandness of an era that spent money on civic buildings,” explains Mark Pasnik, coauthor of Heroic: Concrete Architecture and the New Boston. Rudolph’s ambitions were lofty: The more than 225,000-square-foot mental health center is one of the three buildings originally slated to compose the Government Service Center. As the site’s coordinating architect under the firm Desmond & Lord, Rudolph—a Harvard grad also known to New Englanders for creating a fortress-like library at UMass Dartmouth—envisioned a plaza anchored by a 23-story tower. Because of funding cuts imposed during later stages of the project, however, the tower was never constructed, leaving Boston with the Rudolph-designed mental health center and the conjoined Charles F. Hurley Building. In 1999, the Edward W. Brooke Courthouse was built where the tower would have stood.

Even without the tower, the complex is a striking presence, its grandeur heightened by dramatic projections and dark shadows cast by sunshades. Huge cylinders appear to lift Rudolph’s building from the ground while a curved staircase floats beside it, offering a portal into the center. Perhaps the most distinctive feature is its rippling walls, which workers finished by hand, first casting the concrete in ribbed wooden molds before using bush hammers to chip away at the aggregate. A balance of form and function, the texture masks large swaths of the exterior from the discoloration that comes from weathering.

It’s the same technique Rudolph employed in one of his most famous works: Yale’s Art and Architecture Building, a reigning example of American Brutalism. Determined to shake up the status quo of boring glass office towers, Rudolph saw concrete creations as a way to inject personality into American cities—though he never actually used the term “Brutalism” to define his approach. “In many respects his major works, like the Yale Art and Architecture Building and the Government Service Center, were essays in concrete,” Pasnik says.

Rudolph wanted the Lindemann to be an emotionally moving space. One of the most unique aspects of the building’s interior is its chapel, where light dances across curved walls of concrete. As a counterpoint to the open brick expanse that surrounded City Hall, he carved out a public space in the center of the building. This central courtyard contrasts the stark flatness of City Hall Plaza with a gentle slope and rounded seating areas. The courtyard, however, struggled to become the therapeutic space Rudolph had hoped for.

In the years after the building’s opening, federal budget cuts made grand Brutalist buildings like the mental health center harder to maintain. Today, the work’s sculptural drama is slighted by the temporary chain-link fences meant to prevent people from approaching some of the terrace’s low handrails, which don’t meet contemporary code. Most passersby are unaware of the courtyard within, thanks to parked cars lining the plaza’s entrance, and the building’s once-grand entryway now goes unused.

Maintenance issues cast a gloomy shadow upon it today—making it easy to walk by the Modernist marvel without appreciating its complexities—but the Brutalist building serves as a reminder of an era that invested in civic architecture. Government Center’s concrete creations have been scoffed at for years, but as young architects begin to see the merits of Brutalism’s architectural ethic, perhaps the Lindemann can be revived for a second act.

Huge concrete cylinders rise from its corners. / Photograph by Julia Hopkins

The center’s rippling walls were hammered by hand. / Photograph by Julia Hopkins

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An 1805 lithograph from architects Gridley James Fox Bryant and Arthur Gilman depicts Old City Hall’s ornate façade. / Courtesy of Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, MA-860

Boston has a long list of National Historic Landmarks—but only one where, in one fell swoop, you can trace the footsteps of James Michael Curley, stand in the spot where Ben Franklin dropped out of Boston Latin, and order a medium-rare rib-eye. Old City Hall, once the seat of power in Boston, and now host to a slew of businesses (including one of Boston’s toniest steakhouses), has managed to evolve unlike any other city structure.

Despite its name today, Old City Hall was a refreshingly new style of building upon completion in 1865. Its architects, Arthur Gilman and Gridley James Fox Bryant, drafted a design never before seen in Boston, borrowing from the new addition to the Louvre in Paris to build one of the first French Second Empire structures in the United States. A protruding central pavilion dominates the 80,000-square-foot building, topped by a sloping mansard roof—a hallmark of French Second Empire design. Multiple levels of pilasters bedeck the pavilion, while the building’s façade—fashioned with white granite from New Hampshire—displays rows of arched windows. Inside, Roman Ionic columns and pilasters line what once was the mayor and aldermen’s room.

For 104 years, 30 mayors—including John F. “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald and Kevin White—conducted official business in this City Hall, right on top of the land where Boston Latin, the first public school in the nation, once held classes. As soon as it was unveiled, the building’s uncommonly ornate features sparked the imaginations of other American designers, spawning numerous imitations across the country. But its style eventually fell out of favor. In 1956’s The Last Hurrah, author Edwin O’Connor dismissed it as “a lunatic pile of a building, a great, grim, resolutely ugly dust-catcher.” As a wave of urban renewal swept over the city in the 1960s, Boston scrubbed its turret-topped, decoratively trimmed architecture for a bolder Brutalist future. Blocky concrete buildings replaced the out-of-style Victorians of Scollay Square. A newer, supposedly grander City Hall sprang up in Government Center—and the former City Hall gained a modifier: “Old.”

Today, the building houses offices and a restaurant. / Photography by Zenmasterdod/Flickr

At one point, the Boston Redevelopment Authority talked of demolishing Old City Hall. “It was not highly loved at the time,” explains Architectural Heritage Foundation (AHF) founder and chairman emeritus Roger Webb, who stepped in to save the shunned structure after creating the AHF in 1966. Webb’s idea to keep the “dust-catcher” standing? Convert the government building into a privately held one, where commercial entities could rent spaces. The notion was unheard of in Boston, but it worked. Webb secured a 99-year lease on the building from the City of Boston, and in 1969, Finegold Alexander + Associates Inc., the firm now known as Finegold Alexander Architects, began renovating the place, carving it up into rental space.

By 1971, Old City Hall welcomed its first tenant: Maison Robert. Webb says the Parisian restaurant was a natural fit for the building’s French Second Empire style, and indeed it was—the famed eatery attracted celebrities and politicians until it closed in 2004 and was replaced by Ruth’s Chris Steak House. As more tenants filed into Old City Hall, including the AHF itself, the American Institute of Architects (AIA) took note. The building’s successful adaptive reuse inspired the group to preserve more aging buildings. “You’re looking at the most promising trend in modern architecture,” reads a 1971 AIA advertisement, plastered with an image of Old City Hall’s perfectly preserved façade. The building that once garnered attention with its unusual design was once again making waves.

In July 2017, a real estate firm called Synergy Investments acquired Old City Hall’s 99-year lease for $30.1 million. The company and the AHF agreed to reserve $5 million for repairs and renovations to the building as part of the deal. Though tenants have come and gone, Boston’s former City Hall remains relatively unchanged. Its lease, on the other hand, is halfway complete. Translation? Old City Hall has just over 50 years to kick-start the country’s next architectural craze.

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Designed by architect Chester Lindsay Churchill, the Mapparium features 608 stained glass panels. / Photograph courtesy of the Mary Baker Eddy Library

Of all the things Mary Baker Eddy accomplished in her life, her role in shaping Boston’s cityscape is often overlooked. Neither a designer nor an architect, the founder of Christian Science was the driving force behind the construction of two impressive structures: the 1894 Romanesque First Church of Christ, Scientist, and the 1934 neoclassical headquarters of the Christian Science Publishing Society, completed after her death. Together, these buildings anchor the I. M. Pei & Partners–designed Christian Science Plaza, one of the most majestic spaces in Boston, famous for its sweeping vistas and vast reflecting pool.

And hidden inside the publishing society headquarters is another wonder: a three-story-tall, 30-foot-wide globe constructed of bronze and 608 stained glass panels. Known as the Mapparium, the globe was the brainchild of Boston architect Chester Lindsay Churchill.

Churchill was charged with creating a home for Eddy’s various publications, including the Pulitzer Prize–winning Christian Science Monitor. She had launched the internationally focused newspaper in 1908 in response to the rampant tabloid journalism of the day, encouraging her editors to promote objective reporting over sensationalism—in Eddy’s words, “to injure no man, but to bless all mankind.”

To prepare for this project, Churchill traveled to the New York Daily News, where visitors to Raymond Hood’s skyscraper were awed by a 12-foot-diameter solid globe that continually spun on its axis in the center of the lobby. Churchill proposed installing a similar attraction in the publishing society’s headquarters. But his would be different: In an effort to complement Eddy’s mission of transparency and global perspective, not only would the project be significantly larger than its New York counterpart, it would be made of glass, allowing visitors to view the world from inside it.

Churchill’s proposal required an impressive crew of engineers and artisans. Craftspeople at New York–based Rambusch Company spent the better part of a year hand-tracing sections of a 1934 Rand McNally world map onto thick glass panels imported from the Hope Glass Company in England. The panels were then kiln-fired in special cradles to preserve their unique curves. A circular bronze frame was fashioned to hold the panels, accented by hundreds of light bulbs. A glass bridge was then installed through the middle of the globe.

After three years of design and construction, the Mapparium opened to the public on May 31, 1935. It was an instant hit, attracting more than 50,000 visitors in the first four months. Though updates to the map have been considered throughout its 80-year history, the Mapparium still shows the world as it was in 1934, capturing a moment when Vietnam was still a part of French Indochina and colonial powers governed Africa.

The Mapparium may be frozen in time, but Boston continues to evolve around it, and the Christian Science Plaza is not immune to demands for greater height and density. This year, for the first time in four decades, there is major construction on the property: Two new skyscrapers are being erected on its northern corner—an apartment/retail building and a 699-foot luxury hotel/condo tower. Meanwhile, visitors continue to gaze from within the great glass globe, where Alaska will always remain a territory and the Soviet Union will continue to dominate Europe and Asia.

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Designed by architect Robert Peabody, the Custom House Tower was once the tallest building around. / Photograph courtesy of the Boston Public Library/Flickr

As Boston undergoes its biggest building boom in generations, it seems only natural to pay tribute to the city’s original—and arguably most beautiful—skyscraper, the Custom House Tower. This Classical Revival–style, 16-story building in McKinley Square has dominated the skyline since its completion in 1915. The tower’s copper-sheathed couplet windows, illuminated observation deck, and 22-foot-wide marble-and-bronze clocks on each of its four sides have been admired by architecture buffs for generations.

It’s amusing to think that Boston’s first tower was built as an addition. The original U.S. Custom House, completed in 1847 of granite from Quincy’s Pine Hill quarry, was a monumental neoclassical edifice designed by Ammi Burnham Young, who borrowed heavily from classic Greek temple architecture. Thirty-two fluted Doric columns, each weighing 42 tons, wrapped its exterior; inside, a grand rotunda, finished with Berkshire County white marble, featured 12 thick, 29-foot-high Corinthian columns supporting a skylit dome.

By the early 20th century, the government had outgrown its building. In response, Robert Peabody, a New Bedford native and partner in the prestigious architecture firm Peabody & Stearns, proposed constructing a new tower above the rotunda. Inspired by the campanile at Saint Mark’s Square in Venice, Peabody’s tower would symbolize Boston’s status as one of the country’s leading port cities.

City zoning codes capped the height of new structures at 125 feet at the time of construction. But because the federal government owned and occupied the property, the Custom House Tower was permitted to rise to an unprecedented 495 feet, solidifying its status as Boston’s first skyscraper and tallest building—a title it maintained until the completion of the Prudential Tower in 1964.

It took three years for Norcross Brothers of Worcester, the general contracting team behind Trinity Church in Copley Square and the New York Public Library, to build the granite-clad tower. To carry the load, they fashioned eight steel columns supported by trusses around the dome. The Corinthian columns that once held up the dome were removed and reassembled at the Franklin Park Zoo, where they still stand today. An iron cap, later recast in stainless steel, topped off the tower and originally served as an exhaust for the heating system.

Over the years, the Custom House was home to numerous government agencies, from customs to the Fish and Wildlife Service. It was vacated in 1986 and was bought by the city a year later, but it remained unused until it was reopened as a Marriott timeshare hotel in 1997.

Although it’s been decades since the Custom House Tower reigned supreme as Boston’s tallest building, it will always stand as a reminder of a time when architecture was beautifully handcrafted and ambitiously conceived.

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A band performs for a crowd in preparation for a Fourth of July celebration in 1912. / Photograph courtesy of Martha’s Vineyard Preservation Trust Archives

In this tech-crazy age, when children would rather play with iPhones than play tag outside, people of all ages still line up for five-minute rides—and the chance to snag a coveted brass ring—aboard the Flying Horses carousel in Oak Bluffs.

Brought to the Vineyard after an eight-year stint on Coney Island, the Flying Horses is the country’s oldest operating platform carousel. It was built in 1876 by Charles Dare, a talented New York toy maker renowned for his contributions to early carousel manufacturing. Housed in a red-shingled barn, the Flying Horses—dubbed a National Historic Landmark in 1986—features 20 stationary wooden horses and four double-seated chariots, all carved by hand and fastened to the carousel’s 36-foot-wide platform. Etched glass-marble eyes and authentic horsehair manes and tails originally accented the horses; the chariots, meanwhile, were modeled after birds, dragons, and snakes. Dare’s craftsmanship was complemented by a series of 19th-century folk art paintings on the carousel’s center panels. These artworks were hidden for years by layers of paint; restoration efforts in the 1970s revealed images including a Hudson River steamboat and a racehorse—remnants of the carousel’s New York roots.

Aside from its impressive artistry, the carousel’s most popular feature (at least in the eyes of its riders) is its ring arm. Composed of metal sidewalls and a sprung-steel lip, the arm—manned by a steadfast attendant—supplies a steady stream of rings, which riders try to grab as they pass by. Those lucky enough to snatch a rare brass ring earn a free ride—and plenty of bragging rights. “It’s the high point of an island summer,” says Christopher Scott, president of the Martha’s Vineyard Preservation Trust, which acquired the carousel in the 1980s. “We frequently get photos showing a child’s first ride, with their parents and grandparents there to witness the event.”

A modern photo of the carousel’s interior. / Photograph by Roland Hopkins

Since landing in Oak Bluffs in 1889, the Flying Horses has been managed by a slew of proprietors, some of whom have revamped aspects of its functionality and appearance. William Davis, who allegedly acquired the carousel as payment for a debt, updated its power system from steam to electric in 1900. Nearly a century later, the Martha’s Vineyard Preservation Trust hired North Carolina artist Rosa Ragan to repaint and enhance the whimsical horses and chariots. The trust also replaced an old tape deck—itself a makeshift substitute for the original calliope—with a 700-pound automatic organ, which plays 12 songs on repeat.

The Flying Horses has seen its share of changes since its 19th-century debut, but its appeal to patrons both young and old remains the same. After all this time, Scott says the carousel—traditionally in operation from Easter through Labor Day—still provides upward of 300,000 rides a year. “For visitors and summer residents, a visit to the carousel is an irreplaceable part of the Vineyard experience,” he says.

A vintage photo of the carousel’s interior. / Photograph courtesy of Martha’s Vineyard Preservation Trust Archives

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The interior of the Back Bay’s Gibson House reveals how Boston’s wealthiest denizens (and their servants) lived and worked during the Victorian era. / Photograph by John Woolf

Walking along Beacon Street in the Back Bay, you might not notice anything special about house number 137, located just a block from the Public Garden. But inside, this residence turned museum, where nothing has been altered since 1954, offers a rare glimpse of Boston’s golden age.

Built in 1860 by Catherine Hammond Gibson for her son, Charles Sr., the Gibson House occupies the second lot developed after Boston began filling in marshland to create the Back Bay neighborhood. Over the next 40 years, the public works project would yield 570 acres of land, on which many of Boston’s most affluent families built their homes.

This house was designed by Edward Clarke Cabot, the architect behind the Boston Athenaeum, and features the eastern and western motifs that were all the rage during the Victorian era. From the French mansard slate roof and Italianate brownstone arches around the windows to the foyer’s gilded “Japanese Leather” wallpaper (embossed paper, added in 1888 by Charles Sr.’s wife, Rosamond, a member of the prominent Crowninshield family of merchants), the Gibson House is considered an exemplar of 19th-century Boston residential design.

Photograph by Mary Prince

Unlike other townhouses of the era, the entrance is centered on the façade. On the other side of the heavy carved walnut double doors is a spacious foyer with high ceilings crowned by a multistory ventilation shaft—a Victorian innovation that served to draw warm air up to all parts of the home while providing natural light from its skylight. Beyond is the dining room, featuring a grand mahogany table. A majestic curving black walnut staircase leads to a landing, where a copy of Gilbert Stuart’s famous painting of George Washington at Dorchester Heights hangs, along with many other works in heavy gilded frames.

Designed for entertaining guests following lunch or dinner, the second floor is divided into men’s and women’s areas, including a paneled library where Charles Sr. conducted business for his cotton brokerage. Family portraits, lamps, tables, and wall-to-wall carpeting abound, just as they did during the home’s heyday. The third floor contains two bedrooms connected by a bathroom with plumbing that was last updated in 1902. The larger bedroom boasts a 15-piece bedroom set built of bird’s-eye maple.

A network of narrow hallways leads to the servant’s kitchen, where a side door opens onto one of the Back Bay’s many public alleys, through which deliveries were received. Servants would also use this route as their entryway.

Photograph by Mary Prince

The preservation of the house was the vision of the eccentric Charles Gibson Jr., who lived there with his mother after his father, Charles Sr., died in 1916. As he watched the neighborhood decline during the 1930s following the Depression and his mother’s death, Charles Jr. tried to maintain the appearance of lost Boston opulence, dining regularly at the Ritz-Carlton in top hat and tails into the 1950s. Perhaps to honor his mother and Boston’s fading Brahmin heritage, he was determined to safeguard every aspect of his family home, forcing his guests to eat in the stairwell so as not to disrupt the dining room that, to this day, is set with Haviland Limoges china, as his mother left it.

Today, the property is overseen by the Gibson Society, which Charles Jr. founded for that purpose before his death, in 1954.

Charles Gibson Jr. / Photograph courtesy of the Gibson House Museum

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One of the city’s few great examples of Beaux-Arts architecture, the renovated Cutler Majestic Theatre is enjoying a vibrant second act. / Photograph by Bruce T. Martin

Modern-day theater-goers marveling at the Cutler Majestic have the unique pleasure of seeing it just as Isabella Stewart Gardner would have when she attended the theater’s opening night in 1903. Before the curtain rose for the musical comedy The Storks, Gardner would have observed the same elaborate details of the Edenlike atmosphere, including the theater’s ceiling, designed to resemble a heavenly trellis with patches of blue sky.

The Cutler Majestic Theatre is the work of architect John Galen Howard, one of the few Americans to attend Paris’s L’Ecole des Beaux-Arts in the late 1800s. The Chelmsford native decked out his only known Boston work with all the classical references that characterize the Beaux-Arts style. As such, it is one of the city’s few great examples of Beaux-Arts architecture, along with the Boston Public Library and South Station. Today, a signature green placard near the building’s entrance announces its significance as a Boston Historic Landmark.

The 1,186-seat theater was commissioned by Eben Dyer Jordan, son of the founder of the Jordan Marsh department store empire, who was an active patron of Boston’s arts institutions. Just three years after opening it, Jordan sold it to the Shubert brothers—then the region’s premier theater operators, who ran everything from boxing matches to vaudeville shows there until 1956, when Sack Theaters converted it into a movie theater.

A photo of the Cutler in the early 1900s.

When it was built, the Majestic was the first theater in Boston to include electric lighting from the outset; other theaters had be retrofitted from gas to electric. Clearly fascinated with this “safe” source of illumination, Howard integrated the electric light bulb into his design, intertwining strings of bulbs with plaster grapevines along the ceiling’s trellis design, lining balconies, and highlighting the theater’s arches. Some 4,500 bulbs give the interior a fantastic glow.

On the exterior, hundreds of additional bulbs mounted in rosettes once lined the carved terra cotta arches as well. “[The façade] is part of creating this sense of arrival, this sense of grandeur,” says architectural historian Amy Finstein, who lectures at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. “When people saw the theater, suddenly they thought, ‘Whoa, this is bigger than me.’ They [knew that they had] arrived at someplace important.”

Three additional arches frame a trio of Tiffany stained-glass windows flanked by fluted ionic columns. The theater’s splendor is further accentuated by intricate stone carvings of fruit atop each window, surrounding three theater masks depicting happiness, sadness, and anger.

From the beginning, the Majestic has been heralded for its impeccable acoustics. Whether ticket holders pay top dollar (for seats like Gardner’s) or retreat to the balcony, they enjoy crystal-clear sound, thanks in part to the auditorium’s inverted bowl shape. Curving both out and up from the stage, it carries sound evenly across the space. Cantilevered balconies, another innovation, allow for unobstructed stage views from every seat in the house.

Gilded decorative plaster and rich handcrafted accents abound, which earned the theater the nickname “House of Gold” early on. The lobby is adorned in a reddish-orange faux marble called scagliola, as well as murals by William de Leftwich Dodge, an artist known for his work in the Library of Congress and the Boston Public Library.

The theater was saved from the wrecking ball by Emerson College in 1983; five years later, the college launched a $14.8 million restoration project. Reopened in 1989, it was eventually renamed the Cutler Majestic in honor of Ted and Joan Cutler. The Cutlers funded the final phases of the project, overseen by Elkus Manfredi Architects and unveiled in 2003. The theater’s marquee is one of the only parts of the building not originally drafted by Howard.

To enjoy a truly authentic experience, book a seat in rows C or D of the center balcony. Made up of original seats from the orchestra level, they include a small hook and rack below—once used to hold canes and top hats. The Cutler is much the same today as it was a century ago—Mrs. Gardner likely wouldn’t spot a difference.

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Atop Prospect Hill tower flies the Grand Union Flag, considered to be America’s first flag. George Washington raised the banner on the hill on New Year’s Day in 1776. / Photograph by Eric Kilby/Flickr

With its massive stonework, crenellations, and iron gates, the four-story tower atop Prospect Hill in Somerville looks like the remnants of a medieval fortress. And that’s no accident. Known as the Prospect Hill Memorial Flag Tower and Observatory, it was built in 1903 to commemorate the site’s military importance during the Revolutionary and Civil wars.

Before pieces of Prospect Hill were leveled off in 1872 to fill in parts of present-day Union Square, it served as a strategic post. It was here that revolutionaries constructed a fort known as the Citadel, which endured British attacks throughout the Siege of Boston. Its location served the revolution well: Soldiers positioned there were able to swiftly come to the aid of troops embroiled in such skirmishes as the Battle of Bunker Hill. It was later used as a training camp during the Civil War, with the surrounding neighborhood renamed “Union Square” in a fit of patriotism.

After that, its history was all but forgotten until the turn of the 20th century, when Somerville joined the City Beautiful Movement—a national effort to enhance the urban landscape by introducing grand structures, monuments, and parks. To commemorate Prospect Hill’s former military importance, Somerville enlisted its city engineer, Ernest W. Bailey, to design both a monument and the surrounding green space. The resulting Gothic-style structure is made of Deer Isle granite, and is accessed by a set of steps along Munroe Street. Concrete retaining walls were added in the 1960s, but decades later, the tower risked collapsing. Using $500,000 in funding from the Community Preservation Act, the city of Somerville replaced upper-level floor slabs, reset parapet stones, restored doors and ornamental iron stairs, and repaired the exterior stairwell while keeping most of the tower’s original design intact. Construction was completed in December 2015.

A photo of the tower in the early 20th century. / Collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society, from Haskell’s Historical Guidebook of Somerville (inset)

Over the following months, the city worked to make the tower more accessible to all, eventually offering tours for the first time in years. In the fall of 2016, volunteer guides led select visits, with docents stationed around the monument to reveal tidbits about the history of Prospect Hill. This spring, climbing tours will begin operating on a regular schedule. The city also commissioned the creation of a virtual experience for those unable to climb the tower’s narrow, winding stairs. Whether in person or via a smart device, curiosity seekers can enjoy taking in panoramic views of the Boston skyline even more spectacular than the ones already visible from the park at the base of the tower.

In addition to stunning vistas and architecture, there’s something else that stops many visitors in their tracks: Eagle-eyed viewers will notice that the billowing banner atop the tower doesn’t look right. Bare of stars, this flag features a red-and-white striped design sporting a British Union Jack symbol in its corner. “Sometimes people will call up and say, ‘My gosh! What’s the matter with the flag that you’re flying up there? It’s the wrong flag!’” says J. Brandon Wilson, executive director of the Somerville Historic Preservation Commission.

In fact, this unusual emblem has a special connection to Prospect Hill. It was this flag—a version that predates Betsy Ross’s landmark stars-and-stripes design—that first represented the soon-to-be United States. To boost morale during the Revolutionary War, General George Washington asked Congress to create a new national flag—one that symbolized unity among the colonies in defiance of the British. The result was the Grand Union Flag, which Washington himself hoisted over the ramparts of the Prospect Hill tower on January 1, 1776. In tribute, Somerville continues to fly it to this day.

“This is a quirky, fun, little, beautiful place, and the history’s so important,” says Community Preservation Act manager Kristen Stelljes, adding that the restoration of the Prospect Hill tower has catalyzed enthusiasm around the iconic Somerville landmark. “A lot of the images and logos and tchotchkes you get show Prospect Hill tower on it,” she says. “It’s such an important part of Somerville that wasn’t accessible, and a lot of people really felt that.”

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This little red shack on Cape Ann has been widely reproduced—in more ways than one. / Photograph by Robert Linsdell/Flickr

The instantly recognizable fishing shack at the end of Bradley Wharf in Rockport doesn’t claim historical significance. No famous architect built it, nor is it any special feat of engineering. Yet this humble red shack—known as Motif No. 1—is thought to be the most-painted building in the world.

Erected in the 1880s as a utilitarian shed, the simple 1,008-square-foot wooden structure served as a storage space for lobstermen and fishermen. On the first floor, seafarers stocked their bait, lines, and other supplies, and mended their nets. A fish broker’s office occupied the partial second story above.

But the mundane post-and-beam fishing shack became something more when it caught the eye of painters in Cape Ann’s burgeoning artists’ colony. Starting in the 1920s, plein air artists were drawn to the shabby wooden hut. Amateurs and masters created their own fishing-shack masterpieces—much to the vexation of a local art teacher named Lester Hornby.

A painter who summered in Rockport and wintered in Paris, Hornby taught art on both sides of the Atlantic, instructing his pupils to take inspiration from local scenery. He found that his Parisian students tended to tackle a variety of different subjects, or motifs. But in Rockport, there was only one: that red shack. Legend has it that one day, after receiving yet another rendition of the oft-repeated image, a frustrated Hornby snapped: “What? ‘Motif No. 1’ again!” Supposedly, the nickname stuck with the building ever since.

This possibly apocryphal mockery didn’t do much to scale back the floods of fishing-shack art. In fact, it buoyed Motif No. 1 (pronounced “motive” by locals) to new heights of artistic cliché. In the 1930s, one artist even bought the building to use as his personal studio. A few years later, a parade-float likeness of the shack made its way into the Chicago World’s Fair. Its popularity with visitors and locals alike warranted postcards and calendars, in addition to the sea of homemade watercolors.

In light of its ever-growing popularity, Rockport city officials resolved to preserve the inspirational magic of Motif No. 1. In 1945 the town bought the shack and designated it to honor Rockport’s military members. That move cemented the quaint little shack’s status as an indelible symbol of coastal Massachusetts, immortalized on book jackets and posters touting the region. Today, you can step foot inside any gift shop even remotely near Essex County and see the shack plastered on mugs, magnets, and shot glasses. Tourists still flock to see it—despite the fact that there’s nothing terribly remarkable about the building.

“It certainly wasn’t a unique structure,” says L.M. Vincent, author of the 2011 book In Search of Motif No. 1. Then how does he explain its extraordinary fame? “I looked at where the other fish shacks were, and from an artist’s point of view you either didn’t have access, or you didn’t have the background, or you had a big ugly building in the way,” he says. “So that location, just sort of sticking out like a sore red thumb, is really what made it special.”

And even that was a fluke. According to Vincent, the iconic color of this no-frills building wasn’t meant as decoration—rather, it was probably a case of Yankee thrift. “Historically, oils such as linseed could be mixed with pigment derived from clay, flaxseed, cattle blood, or plain old rust (ferrous oxide) to make a reddish color,” he writes. “Iron oxides for red paint were relatively cheap, so a shade of red was the most economical color, if you weren’t picky about the exact hue.”

Decades later, artists continue to render Motif No. 1 on canvasses daily—but while the scene’s rustic charm is as genuine as ever, the landmark itself is not. Yes, the building sitting at the edge of the wharf is a fake. The original Motif No. 1 met its untimely end in the Blizzard of ’78, walloped to red smithereens by wind and waves. Even before the storm died down, Rockport residents gathered near the wharf to pay their respects, vowing to rebuild. By October 1978, they’d finished a perfect replica, dangling buoys and all, based on measurements from the 1938 Historic American Buildings Survey.

Inauthentic as it may be, the little red shack that stands today hasn’t lost a shred of its New England credibility. Indeed, perhaps it’s only fitting that a building that’s been imitated thousands of times on paper should receive its very own reproduction.

Artist Anthony Thieme paints Motif No. 1 in the mid-1900s. / Photograph courtesy of the Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection

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The building’s grand staircase leads to a sloping center plaza. / Photograph by Julia Hopkins

The Erich Lindemann Mental Health Center is a hulking, overlooked mass of concrete that’s part of an incomplete building complex. It’s also a stunning achievement of one of the 20th century’s most renowned Modernist architects.

Designed by Paul Rudolph in 1962 and completed in 1971, the Brutalist creation is a decidedly imposing presence just a few blocks from City Hall—one that would have been dwarfed by a much larger Brutalist tower, if all had gone according to plan.

The cement behemoths spawned from Boston’s wave of midcentury urban renewal were “built with the kind of grandness of an era that spent money on civic buildings,” explains Mark Pasnik, coauthor of Heroic: Concrete Architecture and the New Boston. Rudolph’s ambitions were lofty: The more than 225,000-square-foot mental health center is one of the three buildings originally slated to compose the Government Service Center. As the site’s coordinating architect under the firm Desmond & Lord, Rudolph—a Harvard grad also known to New Englanders for creating a fortress-like library at UMass Dartmouth—envisioned a plaza anchored by a 23-story tower. Because of funding cuts imposed during later stages of the project, however, the tower was never constructed, leaving Boston with the Rudolph-designed mental health center and the conjoined Charles F. Hurley Building. In 1999, the Edward W. Brooke Courthouse was built where the tower would have stood.

Even without the tower, the complex is a striking presence, its grandeur heightened by dramatic projections and dark shadows cast by sunshades. Huge cylinders appear to lift Rudolph’s building from the ground while a curved staircase floats beside it, offering a portal into the center. Perhaps the most distinctive feature is its rippling walls, which workers finished by hand, first casting the concrete in ribbed wooden molds before using bush hammers to chip away at the aggregate. A balance of form and function, the texture masks large swaths of the exterior from the discoloration that comes from weathering.

It’s the same technique Rudolph employed in one of his most famous works: Yale’s Art and Architecture Building, a reigning example of American Brutalism. Determined to shake up the status quo of boring glass office towers, Rudolph saw concrete creations as a way to inject personality into American cities—though he never actually used the term “Brutalism” to define his approach. “In many respects his major works, like the Yale Art and Architecture Building and the Government Service Center, were essays in concrete,” Pasnik says.

Rudolph wanted the Lindemann to be an emotionally moving space. One of the most unique aspects of the building’s interior is its chapel, where light dances across curved walls of concrete. As a counterpoint to the open brick expanse that surrounded City Hall, he carved out a public space in the center of the building. This central courtyard contrasts the stark flatness of City Hall Plaza with a gentle slope and rounded seating areas. The courtyard, however, struggled to become the therapeutic space Rudolph had hoped for.

In the years after the building’s opening, federal budget cuts made grand Brutalist buildings like the mental health center harder to maintain. Today, the work’s sculptural drama is slighted by the temporary chain-link fences meant to prevent people from approaching some of the terrace’s low handrails, which don’t meet contemporary code. Most passersby are unaware of the courtyard within, thanks to parked cars lining the plaza’s entrance, and the building’s once-grand entryway now goes unused.

Maintenance issues cast a gloomy shadow upon it today—making it easy to walk by the Modernist marvel without appreciating its complexities—but the Brutalist building serves as a reminder of an era that invested in civic architecture. Government Center’s concrete creations have been scoffed at for years, but as young architects begin to see the merits of Brutalism’s architectural ethic, perhaps the Lindemann can be revived for a second act.

Huge concrete cylinders rise from its corners. / Photograph by Julia Hopkins

The center’s rippling walls were hammered by hand. / Photograph by Julia Hopkins

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An 1805 lithograph from architects Gridley James Fox Bryant and Arthur Gilman depicts Old City Hall’s ornate façade. / Courtesy of Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, MA-860

Boston has a long list of National Historic Landmarks—but only one where, in one fell swoop, you can trace the footsteps of James Michael Curley, stand in the spot where Ben Franklin dropped out of Boston Latin, and order a medium-rare rib-eye. Old City Hall, once the seat of power in Boston, and now host to a slew of businesses (including one of Boston’s toniest steakhouses), has managed to evolve unlike any other city structure.

Despite its name today, Old City Hall was a refreshingly new style of building upon completion in 1865. Its architects, Arthur Gilman and Gridley James Fox Bryant, drafted a design never before seen in Boston, borrowing from the new addition to the Louvre in Paris to build one of the first French Second Empire structures in the United States. A protruding central pavilion dominates the 80,000-square-foot building, topped by a sloping mansard roof—a hallmark of French Second Empire design. Multiple levels of pilasters bedeck the pavilion, while the building’s façade—fashioned with white granite from New Hampshire—displays rows of arched windows. Inside, Roman Ionic columns and pilasters line what once was the mayor and aldermen’s room.

For 104 years, 30 mayors—including John F. “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald and Kevin White—conducted official business in this City Hall, right on top of the land where Boston Latin, the first public school in the nation, once held classes. As soon as it was unveiled, the building’s uncommonly ornate features sparked the imaginations of other American designers, spawning numerous imitations across the country. But its style eventually fell out of favor. In 1956’s The Last Hurrah, author Edwin O’Connor dismissed it as “a lunatic pile of a building, a great, grim, resolutely ugly dust-catcher.” As a wave of urban renewal swept over the city in the 1960s, Boston scrubbed its turret-topped, decoratively trimmed architecture for a bolder Brutalist future. Blocky concrete buildings replaced the out-of-style Victorians of Scollay Square. A newer, supposedly grander City Hall sprang up in Government Center—and the former City Hall gained a modifier: “Old.”

Today, the building houses offices and a restaurant. / Photography by Zenmasterdod/Flickr

At one point, the Boston Redevelopment Authority talked of demolishing Old City Hall. “It was not highly loved at the time,” explains Architectural Heritage Foundation (AHF) founder and chairman emeritus Roger Webb, who stepped in to save the shunned structure after creating the AHF in 1966. Webb’s idea to keep the “dust-catcher” standing? Convert the government building into a privately held one, where commercial entities could rent spaces. The notion was unheard of in Boston, but it worked. Webb secured a 99-year lease on the building from the City of Boston, and in 1969, Finegold Alexander + Associates Inc., the firm now known as Finegold Alexander Architects, began renovating the place, carving it up into rental space.

By 1971, Old City Hall welcomed its first tenant: Maison Robert. Webb says the Parisian restaurant was a natural fit for the building’s French Second Empire style, and indeed it was—the famed eatery attracted celebrities and politicians until it closed in 2004 and was replaced by Ruth’s Chris Steak House. As more tenants filed into Old City Hall, including the AHF itself, the American Institute of Architects (AIA) took note. The building’s successful adaptive reuse inspired the group to preserve more aging buildings. “You’re looking at the most promising trend in modern architecture,” reads a 1971 AIA advertisement, plastered with an image of Old City Hall’s perfectly preserved façade. The building that once garnered attention with its unusual design was once again making waves.

In July 2017, a real estate firm called Synergy Investments acquired Old City Hall’s 99-year lease for $30.1 million. The company and the AHF agreed to reserve $5 million for repairs and renovations to the building as part of the deal. Though tenants have come and gone, Boston’s former City Hall remains relatively unchanged. Its lease, on the other hand, is halfway complete. Translation? Old City Hall has just over 50 years to kick-start the country’s next architectural craze.

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Photograph by Chuck Choi

Before visitors marveled at Autodesk’s robotic prototypes and the Design Center’s sparkling showrooms, the Seaport’s Innovation and Design Building housed a different kind of hustle and bustle—one where thousands of workers performed manual labor on warships. Yet throughout its lifetime, big things have always happened inside the century-old structure, which happens to be one of the largest in the city.

Commissioned by the U.S. Department of Defense, the one-third-mile-long building was constructed in 1918 atop a series of mud flats. It served as a waterside warehouse for the South Boston Army Base and the Naval Annex—an offshoot of the busy Charlestown Navy Yard across the harbor—storing and distributing a range of military supplies. During World War II, the site was indispensable to the country’s military effort, and at the height of the war, more than 50,000 people worked day and night to repair American and Allied ships there.

But during the peaceful years after, the once-humming Naval Annex grew quieter, and in the 1980s the city bought the site—sandwiched between a dry dock and a cruise ship terminal—and developed it as the Bronstein Industrial Center and the Boston Design Center. Reusing the masonry-constructed warehouse for manufacturing and R & D made perfect sense: Its 1.4 million square feet spanned eight floors, all of them able to withstand heavy loads. Plus, the complex boasts ceilings that soar up to 16 feet high, as well as multiple freight elevators and wide bays for loading and unloading materials. The open interiors help, too; if the Prudential Tower were laid on its side, it still wouldn’t measure as long as the former Army supply depot.

Courtesy of Jamestown

The raw industrial space offered by the Bronstein Center proved to be a gold mine for modern manufacturing. But as the 21st century came knocking, developer Michael Phillips—president of the Atlanta- and New York–based firm Jamestown—recognized further potential in the place. His vision? “A 24-hour manufacturing innovation hub in the city center,” he says, where designers, makers, and innovators could not only coexist, but work together.

It wasn’t long before Phillips’s vision became a reality. With city approval, Jamestown purchased the majority of the massive former warehouse in 2013 and reclassified some of its industrial and vacant spaces as commercial space. (A smaller portion of the building functions primarily as a laboratory, owned by the Boston development firm Related Beal.) Jamestown aptly renamed the complex the Innovation and Design Building, or IDB, and began a $100 million renovation to replace 1,000 windows, enhance entrances, improve lighting, install 300 indoor bike racks, and create a centralized heating and cooling system, among other improvements.

In the few years since then, the building has lured creatives, designers, engineers, and researchers, reinvigorating the landmark with activity. It still attracts interior designers (and the design-loving public) to the Boston Design Center’s shops and showrooms, but the IDB is also the new home of Reebok, Elkus Manfredi Architects, America’s Test Kitchen, the startup accelerator MassChallenge, and dozens of other firms and technology companies. The building is, in theory, a one-stop shop for bringing new innovations to life. “The ecosystem is full circle,” Phillips says. “It’s a very unique way to do things.”

Aside from amassing a slew of new tenants, the reinvented storehouse aims to become a destination for urban dwellers. Shipping containers lining the building’s streetscape, for example, aren’t for transporting products—one houses a coffee shop, while another acts as a Yankee Lobster Company outpost.

“Even though it was designed 100 years ago,” Phillips says of the IDB, “it’s so versatile for everything that is happening in the innovation space.”

Courtesy of the Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection

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The Prudential Tower soars over trees lining the Muddy River. / Photograph by Michele Snow

If you were unceremoniously dropped into the Arnold Arboretum—or Franklin Park, or even the Back Bay Fens—there’s a good chance you wouldn’t realize you were in the middle of a major city. That’s the beauty of the Emerald Necklace, the winding network of green spaces that stretches across Boston. Not only do these verdant expanses serve as surprisingly lush urban oases, each of the Necklace’s “jewels”—the parks within the chain—feels like its own distinctive and natural landscape. And that’s on purpose.

As you traverse the seven-mile-long series of meadows, marshlands, and roadways, you’re living out the vision of Frederick Law Olmsted. The country’s first professional landscape architect, Olmsted believed city parks should be sanctuaries from the clamor and grit of urban life, providing peaceful settings and picturesque views as a contrast to their industrial surroundings. When Olmsted successfully applied this design theory to New York’s Central Park in 1857, Boston took note, eventually hiring him in the 1870s to build not just one large park, but an entire park system.

Olmsted set out to create spaces where Bostonians could “easily go when the day’s work is done, and where they may stroll for an hour, seeing, hearing, and feeling nothing of the bustle and jar of the streets.” He started by sketching what he called a “green ribbon,” a path that would start at Boston Common and weave all the way into Brookline.

It would be a project decades in the making. Olmsted began with the Back Bay Fens, transforming a sewage-clogged swamp into parkland by carving a salt marsh into the boggy area and rerouting the sewers from the Muddy River into the Charles with a series of floodgates. Next, he worked with Charles Sprague Sargent to remake former farmland into the Arnold Arboretum, a living museum of horticulture. Olmsted also extended the green ribbon to Jamaica Pond, crafting a serene landscape around the kettle pond. In areas where space didn’t allow for entire parks, Olmsted converted former carriage paths into the tree-lined parkways now known as the Arborway, Riverway, and Jamaicaway.

The work was slow going, as Olmsted’s plans required Boston to first acquire land for the parks gradually through eminent domain, then clear farmlands, remove houses, and fill in bodies of water. He sought to create park environments consistent with a site’s original character, using native plants and rejecting showy gardening effects. “Because he was so accomplished at designing a naturalistic landscape, people think they’re natural,” says Karen Mauney-Brodek, president of the Emerald Necklace Conservancy, which preserves the 1,100 acres of parkland.

Olmsted’s 1894 plan for the Emerald Necklace, which connects the Common to Franklin Park. / National Park Service Olmsted Archives

By 1895, after about 20 years of work, Olmsted was done—and his legacy was forever tied to Boston. Though he completed influential projects across the continent, Olmsted settled in Brookline in 1883. He opened offices for the country’s first landscape architecture firm in his home, and continued to work on the city’s chain of parks. “He thought of his work in Boston as being the most important of his career,” Mauney-Brodek explains.

The Emerald Necklace that Boston wears today remains the sparkling pendant Olmsted envisioned—but, like any heirloom treasure, it’s required some polish to retain its luster. By the early 20th century, maintenance for the architect’s beloved string of parks had fallen by the wayside. After a period of neglect, restoration efforts picked up in the 1960s and 1970s, when a renewed interest in parklands swept the country. Thanks to this newfound sense of pride, the green ribbon of parks—which had acquired the moniker “Emerald Necklace”—finally got their formal title with the 1998 creation of the Emerald Necklace Conservancy.

Today, Olmsted’s legacy survives not just through the living environments he sprinkled across the city, but through the Conservancy’s preservation efforts. The organization, which hosts its fundraising gala on the Necklace grounds each spring, is currently advocating for improvements to the Muddy River, as well as a stronger connection between the Arboretum and Franklin Park. “We really do want to invite people that know the Necklace to come back, to use it, to find something new,” Mauney-Brodek says. “We’re blessed in Boston that we have many individuals and foundations that care about public spaces and how we use them to connect and improve ourselves.”

A 1919 look at a stone bridge in Olmsted Park. / Courtesy of Emerald Necklace Conservancy/Boston Public Library

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