Prudential Tower
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The Prudential Tower, also known as the Prudential Building or, colloquially, as The Pru,[1][2], part of the Prudential Center complex, is Boston's second-tallest skyscraper (after the John Hancock Tower). Floor space within the tower stands at 1.2 million square feet. It was designed by Charles Luckman and Associates for Prudential Insurance. Completed in 1964, the building is 759 ft (229 m) tall and has 52 floors. It dwarfed the 1947 John Hancock building, seen at the left in the photo, spurring the rival insurance company to build the 1975 John Hancock Tower which is just slightly taller at 788 ft (240 m). A 50th floor observation deck, called the "Prudential Skywalk", is currently the highest observation deck in New England that is open to the public (the John Hancock Tower's observation deck having been closed since 2001).
The Pru was the tallest building in the world outside New York on completion. When it was built, the New York Times called it "the showcase of the New Boston [representing] the agony and the ecstasy of a city striving to rise above the sordidness of its recent past".[3] But Ada Louise Huxtable called it "a flashy 52-story glass and aluminum tower... part of an over-scaled megalomaniac group shockingly unrelated to the city's size, standards, or style. It is a slick developer's model dropped into an urban renewal slot in Anycity, U.S.A.—a textbook example of urban character assassination."[4] Two decades later, architecture writer Donlyn Lyndon called it "an energetically ugly, square shaft that offends the Boston skyline more than any other structure."[citation needed] In 1990, a Globe architecture critic commented
- The Prudential Center has been the symbol of bad design in Boston for so long that we'd probably miss it if it disappeared. Occasionally, this critic has awarded prizes for the worst Boston buildings of the year; inevitably, those prizes were called the Pru Awards.[5]
Today, the Pru is no longer even among the fifty tallest buildings in the USA. Within Boston, in addition to the nearby John Hancock tower, many other tall buildings have since been built in the Boston's financial district, including the 614 ft (187 m) Federal Reserve Bank. The Pru and John Hancock towers still dominate the Back Bay skyline, but other tall buildings have started arising there as well since the late 1990s, perhaps most notably 111 Huntington Avenue, which is also part of the Prudential Center.
The Prudential Center is currently owned by Boston Properties. The building is one of several Prudential Centers built around the United States (such as the notable tower in Chicago) constructed as capital investments by Prudential Financial (formerly, The Prudential Insurance Company of America). Preceding Prudential Financial's demutualization, Prudential sold off many of its real estate assets, for instance most of the air rights in Times Square, and the Prudential Center in Boston, to put cash on the corporate balance sheets. Many of the upper floors are home to The Gillette Company, now a unit of Procter & Gamble. The building was sold to Boston Properties. However, Prudential Financial's then head of global marketing, and Boston native, Michael Hines, suggested that the real estate deal only go through with the condition that Prudential retain the name and signage rights for the Prudential Center and Prudential Tower. Signage rights in Boston are very limited, and Prudential's are grandfathered. The other notable backlit signs allowed above 100 feet include the State Street Bank sign, Sheraton sign, and Citgo Sign. Using similar negotiations, Prudential retains two notable signs in Times Square.
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[edit] Prudential Center
The Prudential Center, situated on 23 acres, is in the Back Bay neighborhood at 800 Boylston Street and houses a successful 495,229 square foot shopping mall, the Shops at Prudential Center, in the base. Known to locals as "the Pru," it is bordered by Belvedere, Dalton, Boylston, and Exeter streets, along with Huntington Avenue.
Before the Prudential development, the site was a switch yard for the Boston and Albany Railroad. By 1965, a part of the negotiations for the Massachusetts Turnpike extension included the construction of the roadway below parts of the Prudential complex. The Prudential still has its own exit from the turnpike for this reason.
The new skyscraper at 111 Huntington Avenue was completed in 2002 and is directly across the street from the well-known The Colonnade Hotel located at 120 Huntington Avenue.
The third tower of the Prudential Center is 101 Huntington Avenue; at a mere 25 stories, it is dwarfed by the other two.
The Hynes Convention Center is also connected to the complex, which combined was considered the first mixed-use development in New England. By the fall of 2007 another major development will be completed along Boylston Street at the Prudential Center complex: the Mandarin Oriental Boston Hotel, now under construction.[1] [2]
The complex also includes two MBTA stops, Prudential and Hynes Convention Center/ICA. Prudential is on the Huntington Avenue side of the building directly outside the The Colonnade Hotel and is the first station on the Green Line "E" Branch after the split from the main line at Copley Square. Hynes Convention Center is a stop on the main Green Line across Boylston Street at the intersection of Newbury Street and Massachusetts Avenue, a short walk from Hynes Convention Center or the Prudential Center.
The Boston Duck Tours also begin one of their city tours from the mall at the Prudential Center.
[edit] References
- ^
e.g. Burge, Kathleen (2006), "Made You Look! Yeah, There's the Top of the Pru, But There Are Other Amazing Views—If You Know Where to Find Them. The Boston Globe, July 16, 2006, p. C1
- ^ Feeney, Mark (1998), "The Homely Landmark's a Skyscraper We Can't Stop Looking Down On, But in '65, It Gave The City a Big Boost" The Boston Globe,, February 3, 1998, page C1: "'The Pru' everyone calls it: a resigned shrug of a name, as flat and uninflected as the wan moue its pronunciation requires."
- ^ Fenton, John H. (1965) "Center in Boston To Be Dedicated," The New York Times, April 18, 1965, p. R1
- ^ Huxtable, Ada Louise (1964): "Renewal in Boston: Good and Bad," The New York Times, April 19, 1964, p. X24
- ^ Campbell, Robert (1990), "Rebuilding the Pru Disaster," The Boston Globe, January 28, 1990, p. B33
