Copley Square

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Trinity Church with the Old John Hancock Tower in Copley Square

Trinity Church reflected in the windows of the John Hancock Tower

Copley Square is an area of the Back Bay district of Boston, Massachusetts. The name refers to the city square bounded by Boylston Street, Dartmouth Street, St. James Street, and Clarendon St. The Boston Public Library, Old South Church, Copley Trinity Church, and the John Hancock Tower are all arrayed around the square. It is near the finish line of the Boston Marathon (and has a statue honoring the marathon in its park), and is named for John Singleton Copley, an early American portrait artist. The name may also refer to the region around the square in general.

The word "square" means an open area at the meeting of two or more streets. By contrast, Copley Square has been a square in the usual sense of the word since 1994, when its street pattern was reconfigured to create what is now Copley Square Park. Before 1916, it was the site of the campus of MIT, which moved across the river to Cambridge in that year. The early Museum of Fine Arts was also originally located on the square.

[edit] The Buildings of Copley Square

Trinity Church (1872-77), designed by H. H. Richardson

This is one of Richardson's crowning achievements and a unique example of his style. In 1893, Baedeker's United States called it "deservedly regarded as one of the finest buildings in America."

The Boston Public Library with the Prudential Building behind it to the right

The Boston Public Library (1888-1892), designed by McKim, Mead, and White

It is a leading example of the Beaux-Arts style in the US. Sited across Copley Square from Trinity Church, it was intended to be "a palace for the people." Baedeker's 1893 guide terms it "dignified and imposing, simple and scholarly," and "a worthy mate... to Trinity Church." At that time, its 600,000 volumes made it the largest free public library in the world.

The northwest corner of Copley Square, showing Charles Follen McKim's Boston Public Library on the left, and Charles Amos Cummings' New Old South Church to the right

The Old South Church, also called the New Old South Church (645 Boylston St. on Copley Square) (1872-1875), designed by Charles Amos Cummings and Willard T. Sears.

Located across the street from the Boston Public Library, It was designed by the Boston architectural firm of Cummings and Sears in the Venetian Gothic style. The style follows the precepts of the British cultural theorist and architectural critic John Ruskin (1819 – 1900) as outlined in his treatise The Stones of Venice. Old South Church remains a significant example of Ruskin's influence on architecture in the US. Charles Amos Cummings and Willard T. Sears also designed the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

The Copley Plaza Hotel, (1912), designed by Henry Janeway Hardenbergh.

This building sits on the site of the the first monumental building on the square was the Museum of Fine Arts building. Begun in 1870, it opened in 1876, with a large portion of its collection taken from the Boston Athenaeum Art Gallery. It was designed in a Gothic Revival style of red brick and stone. The hotel that replaced it was designed in a restrained Beaux-Arts, neo-Renaissance style that belies its sumptuous interiors. The hotel's architect, Henry Janeway Hardenbergh, also designed other famous hotels, including the Willard Hotel in Washington D.C.

John Hancock Tower (200 Clarendon St.) (1976), designed by I. M. Pei.

It is a 60 storey high dark blue glass tower with a plan in the form of a narrow parallelogram. Initially a controversial building, it is now considered an excellent example of skyscaper design.

[edit] Transportation

Copley is a stop on the MBTA Green Line subway; the Orange Line and commuter rail trains stop at nearby Back Bay Station. It was also at one time the terminal of the Boston and Providence Railroad, before South Station was built.