Narrator: At the edge of Boston's West End neighborhood, near Beacon Hill and Government Center, the Charles F. Hurley Building occupies a prominent three and a quarter acre site in downtown Boston.
Owned by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the building houses offices for some 600 state employees.
At 50 years old, the building is at a crossroads, and the Commonwealth is pursuing a redevelopment of the site with 3 goals in mind.
First, address the capital needs of an aging office building.
Second, consolidate state employees who are currently spread throughout leased spaces in downtown Boston into state-owned space in government center.
Third, transform the site from an imposing superblock into a pedestrian-friendly part of a vibrant neighborhood.
The Hurley Building is primarily used for state offices for the Department of Unemployment Assistance, MassHire, and other Labor and Workforce agencies.
As building and workplace standards have evolved and the structure has aged, the need to renew and reimagine the Hurley Building has become evident.
Many areas lack natural light and views to the outside. And the building's mechanical systems and windows are outdated leading to occupant discomfort and high energy consumption.
Although Hurley has over 800 feet of frontage along 3 city streets, there is only one entrance into the building from the sidewalk at 19 Stanford Street.
Cambridge Street, which today is a vibrant commercial corridor with shops restaurants and T stations, does not have an entrance to the building due to the site's slope. This lack of activity and lack of transparency along the facade prevents the building from fully engaging the urban realm.
These are some of the building's challenges which the Commonwealth hopes to address as part of its redevelopment.
The Hurley Building was designed by architects at the firm Shepley, Bullfinch, Richardson, and Abbott in collaboration with Paul Rudolph, whose work is recognized nationally and internationally for its contributions to Concrete Modernism.
The building was opened in 1971 as part of the 8-acre Boston Government Service Center complex. This urban renewal project was part of I.M. Pei and Henry Cobb's 60-acre plan for Government Center. 3 concrete buildings were planned for the site, but only 2 were built.
Today, the Hurley Building shares a site with the other original building, the Erich Lindemann Mental Health Center, and with the Edward Brooke Courthouse, which was added to the site several decades later.
Key defining features of the architecture of the government service center include corduroy concrete; columns reaching several stories high spaced at regular intervals; windowless concrete walls wrapping around the entire top story; prominent vertical elements that contain elevators, staircases, and bathrooms; and stepped terraces with sun shades surrounding an interior plaza.
Originally, the 3-building plan for the government service center called for all buildings to be entered from a central plaza which sits a full story above ground level. Today people seeking to access these entrances often have difficulty finding them.
Let's take a brief tour around the entire government service center site. Although there are no plans to make any changes to the Lindemann Building as part of this redevelopment project, this tour will take us around both buildings to give us a better sense of the site's context.
We start in the lobby of the Hurley Building where we find 2 large murals created by artist Constantino Nivola depicting the beneficial role of government employment and welfare programs in working people's lives.
Passing through the lobby from the street side, we come out into the interior plaza, which today is largely unused.
Coming down the steps from the plaza to street level, we arrive in an oval lawn added to the site with the Brooke Courthouse construction in the 1990s.
On the other side of this lawn is the walkway between the Brooke Courthouse and the Lindemann Center, which serves as a key route between Beacon Hill and North Station.
Coming down the walkway and around the Lindemann Building, we arrive at the intersection of Merrimac Street and Staniford Street, which allows perhaps the most recognizable, well-liked view of the entire site, including of course The Frog.
The Frog overlooks a nearly half acre open space, which was originally intended to be used as a public plaza, beckoning people up the grand staircase through the building into the site's interior. But today it's fenced off from the street and is used for parking by state employee vehicles. The staircase is closed for safety reasons.
Turning up Staniford Street, we can see the difference in scale and style between the Lindemann Building--which, again, will not be altered by the redevelopment of the Hurley Building--and the Hurley Building, which begins at the services tower on the right.
The blank wall that encloses the entire upper story of each building is pulled behind the vertical towers of the Lindeman Building, but protrudes out over the street on the Hurley Building.
Coming up Staniford Street, there is a narrow pedestrian passage between Hurley and Lindemann that leads to the upper level of the employee garage, from which you can access what is today the main entrance to the Lindemann Building.
Continuing up Staniford Street, we come to Cambridge Street and a plaza created by angling the building away from Cambridge Street in order to enable views of the historic Old West Church.
Finally, wrapping around Cambridge Street to New Chardon Street, we come to the one place where the interior plaza can be accessed at grade, and back into the center of the site.
There are plenty of opportunities to improve the Hurley Building site and create a pedestrian-friendly location that better serves this vibrant part of the city, while also respecting the site's history and improving on the quality and cost of office space for state employees.
To share your thoughts, or learn more about the Commonwealth's plans, visit our website.