Description

Redevelopment Plan: “For two decades after its construction in 1964, the retail complex at Prudential Center in Boston’s Back Bay was considered the city’s worst public environment-- hard to reach, windswept, drab and unattractive to shoppers. The 27-acre development was successful as an office location, so in 1988 Prudential, with no public process, proposed massive office and retail additions. The neighbors noisily opposed this development and the City rejected it. Prudential then hired Carr, Lynch, Hack and Sandell and Sikes, Jennings, Kelly & Brewer (from Houston), challenging this team to find the proper balance of expanded uses, and designs that would be attractive to neighbors, shoppers, new tenants and the City. The result, after study of many alternatives and some 250 public and private meetings led by Gary Hack, is the current, highly successful, addition to Boston’s public realm. Retail areas were reconstructed and expanded as light-filled arcades. Four new office towers, three housing structures, and a new hotel were added and a neighborhood-serving supermarket was relocated: altogether, 1.6 million additional square feet.”

The Retail Public Realm: “Retail in the original Prudential Center was located on a level above the surrounding streets and was set back from the streets for auto access, making it hard to reach. It was open to Boston’s winter weather and was dark and drab. The first challenge in planning for redevelopment was to bring the retail back to the surrounding streets in attractive ways, and then to create a lively, light-filled interior environment for shoppers, office workers and residents—an inviting public realm. A series of enclosed arcades, new pedestrian streets through the development, knit Boston’s Back Bay and South end back together. New glass arcade entrances, extending to Boylston Street and Huntington Avenue, invite people into the refurbished Center and allow for a gradual transition from the street level to the shopping arcades. A glass enclosed bridge across Huntington Avenue connects to another shopping and hotel complex.”

Boylston Street and Huntington Avenue: “Upon approval of the master plan and redesign of the retail environment, CLHS turned to the Prudential Center’s public fronts, Boylston Street and Huntington Avenue. Alternatives were studied for new office and residential development on Boylston Street and commercial frontage on Huntington Avenue. CLHS prepared the massing guidelines for these new structures, bringing the Center back to the streets, and then designed new streetscapes. Together, the massing and streetscape extend the Back Bay elegance to what had been a featureless, set-back street frontage. The residential buildings are designed with Boylston Street scale, Back Bay character and retail frontage. At the Boylston and Huntington entrances to the Center, CLHS designed new plazas with a rich variety of planting and paving.”

Additional information:

- John T. Fallon, "Development of Prudential Center,: Urban Land 24, no. 10 (November 1965): 3-6.

- William M. Timmons, "The Prudential Center Agreement: A Case Study in Property Tax Concession," Assessors Journal (July 1967): 1-17.

- Boston Prudential Center Project Advisory Committee, "Prudential project advisory committee development guidelines" (https://archive.org/details/prudentialprojec00bost)

- Elihu Rubin, "Insuring the City: The Prudential Center and the Postwar Urban Landscape" (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012).

- Philip Archidi, "The Daming of the Pru," Progressive Architecture (October 1994): 82-87.

- Yvonne H. Chabrier, "Born Again," Boston Magazine (November 1991): 143-145.

- "Urban Mall is Refocused in Boston," New York Times (October 2, 1991).

- Gary Hack, "Updating Prudential Center," Urban Land: 28-31 and 88.

- archBoston, Evolution of the Prudential Center: 1954-1989 (https://archboston.com/community/threads/evolution-of-the-prudential-center-1954-1989.1519/)