With successful intergration, the conceptualization of urban arts institutions have become crucial in redefining our cities as a natural source for contemporary thinking - enticing new capital investment and inquisitive residents / tourists - and a primary indicator of the city’s aspirations that speaks wholeheartedly to young and empowering talent in a new global economy. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Boston would experience an unprecedented amount of new cultural construction and philanthropy along the Huntington Avenue thoroughfare - a broad expanse of freshly-repleted land from the marshy wetlands of the city’s Back Bay (1858-1890) - that would introduce such notable buildings as the Boston Public Library (1895), Horticultural Hall (1901), the New England Conservatory of Music (1901), Chickering Hall (1901), Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (1903), Jordan Hall (1904), Mother Church Extension (1906), the Boston Opera House (1909), and the Museum of Fine Arts (1909). Notably, this manufactured virgin land was an especially highly-desired site for the relocation of the valued Boston Symphony Orchestra from the congested urban fabric of the city’s original peninsula - leaving the Boston Music Hall (Orpheum Theatre) to become the first cultural institution to secure a position in the Fenway area with the new Boston Symphony Hall (1900). This immediate injection of extensive cultural activity - all within a decade of time - brought an opulent style of architecture that had rarely been seen in Boston, neverless the urgency of construction would create an ill-defined and inflexible cultural district along a mile stretch of Huntington Avenue with no collateral space to compliment the merit of their designs. Years later, at the point of Boston’s ‘urban reinvention’ in the 1960s, the Boston Opera House and Chickering Hall (among others) would be torn down from Huntington’s architectural cultural row, replaced by growing academic influences and the new 14-acre Christian Science Plaza - following other large-scale urban interventions throughout the city, such as the West End clearing (1960), Prudential Center (1964), Copley Square (1966), and City Hall Plaza (1968) - all defining Boston’s current urban landscape. In 1998, the city of Boston would acknowledge Huntington Avenue’s prominent position in defining the city’s cultural vitality by designating the section between Massachusetts and Longwood Avenues as the “Avenue of the Arts” with Symphony Hall anchoring this distinction as the earliest and most prominent structure serving the area.
Boston Symphony
“The democratization of space adds an additional dimension to a project: to give an urban sense to an area that needs urban participation. Cultural locations, notably musical ones, have the natural ability of enriching the urban texture, stop the city’s barbarization and give back that extraordinary quality that it has always had in history. ” - Renzo Piano
Since the great wave of construction along Huntington Avenue, Boston has not seen significant civic investment in the construction of a centralized cultural center with emphasis on the performing arts. Adding the new ICA building (2002) - constructed as a catalyst for the redevelopment of the city’s old industrial waterfront (Fan Pier) - along with the additions to both the Museum of Fine Arts (2010) and the Gardner Museum (2011) have been welcome developments to the city’s cultural life. However, Boston - so rich in prominent art institutions and talent - has fallen behind other American cities, such as New York, Miami, Dallas and Los Angeles (to name a few), in recent years with the lack of a flexible, state-of-the-art performance facility that can both engage and invigorate the city. The question: Does a city like Boston need such a building? Recently, the Opera Boston announced it would be ceasing operations after 8 years in the Cutler Majestic Theatre, leading some to wonder if such a performance art was appealing in New England. Some would argue the recessed economy and inadequate facilities would bring on the demise - leading me to wonder if the Boston Symphony Orchestra would have survived if it had never moved to its prominent Fenway site. Regardless, it can be seen the need to reconnect, rather than preserve, Boston’s great performance halls within the urban fabric so that these highly regarded institutions may translate their programmatic successes into engaging civic moments, while also considering a new facility that can cure what Boston Globe’s Jeremy Eichler calls Boston’s “void in the cultural life of a city so rich in other dimensions”.
