Post Office Square, Boston, Massachusetts

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Post Office Square in the Financial District, Boston, Massachusetts

Post Office Square (named after the post office which lay on it,^[1] now replaced by the John W. McCormack Post Office and Court House) in Boston, Massachusetts is almost entirely occupied by a privately owned and managed public park named Norman B. Leventhal Park, after the Boston building manager and designer who designed it. It sits above a parking garage in the heart of the Financial District. This garage, named "The Garage at Post Office Square,"^[2] is at 80 ft (24 m) below the surface, is the deepest point in the city, and revenues from parking fund the maintenance of the park. The 1.7 acre (6,900 m²) park is a popular lunchtime destination for area workers. It features a cafe, fountains, and a pergola around a central lawn, and provides seat cushions for visitors during the summer. Designed by the landscape architects The Halvorson Company, the park is also home to "125 species of plants."^[3]

Also on the square is the New England Telephone Building, in which the lab in which the first telephone was made has been reconstructed.^[4]

Harvard University reached an agreement with the Friends of Post Office Square to place six large trees from its Arnold Arboretum collection on permanent loan in the square, but "[a]s of 2003, only one of the... trees remain."[1]

[edit] History

Post Office Square was the site of a 1964 speech by Lyndon B. Johnson.^[5]

There was a transformer explosion and fire in the One Post Office Square building in December of 1986. An electric company worker was killed but fortunately it was after normal business hours and the building was able to be evacuated with only a a few injuries.^[6]

It was also the site of the now-closed Boston Claim Assistance Site of the September 11th Victim Compensation Program.^[7]