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Boston, Massachusetts
You don’t surrender when you still got one bullet left
If the first page of the slideshow was all about a reintroduction to Boston (and it was) and the second page of the slideshow was all about AIA25 (and it was), then this last page is all about my free day in Boston, which at the time I somewhat sarcastically called Boston Fun Day, despite the fact that it was a pretty accurate description in the end.
I started Boston Fun Day late, after the AIA25 morning keynote ended at the convention center at 10:15 AM. Armed with a week long Charlie Card pass, I headed out despite some built in challenges to the day. The first was that the city decided to shut down the Green Line for a few days making all the best transit connections no longer possible, the second was that operating hours for some of these places ended by 5:00 PM meaning time was not always on my side and, most significantly, it was the hottest day of the year so far with temperatures over 90 degrees.
Despite all that I stuck to my plan and took a Silver Line bus to a Red Line train to an Orange Line train to Ruggles and started at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, a place where I had never been before. The museum is exceptionally impressive, a (kind of) Venetian Palazzo centered around a spectacular covered courtyard with a Renzo Piano designed glassy entry. Inside the art is old and (in a few places) missing, as the museum is famously the site of an art heist. And a big art heist at that. It is still unsolved and is still considered the world’s largest property theft. I (of course) know nothing about it since, as I have clearly gone out of my way to state multiple times, I rarely visit Boston for completely unsuspicious reasons. Although if I did actually know more, I’m pretty sure to cover my tracks I’d probably just say I rarely visit Boston for completely unsuspicious reasons so of course I had nothing to do with it.
I headed out on foot to my next destination, skipping the MFA, walking through the Fens and right through all that noticeable heat until I finally found a pool, unfortunately is was only a reflecting one.
The Christian Science Plaza was designed by IM Pei back in the early 1970s and its reflecting pool is pretty long- about 700 feet. At that distance, the curvature of the earth needs to be taken into account, meaning that the ends of the pool are slightly lower than its center, otherwise the water wouldn’t spill evenly over the sides, or so they say.
Just past Christian Science Plaza is the Prudential Center and its excellent observation deck called View Boston. What makes it excellent are three features: a high ceiling indoor gallery where you can see the back of the Prudential letters, a wonderful outdoor observation deck with a nice breeze on that hot day, and finally a fun, video mapped scale model of the entire city, or at least a lot of it.
After I came down from such great heights, I headed over to Copley Square to see the two great buildings there starting with the McKim Mead & White designed Boston Public Library, a real munificent gem of a building and a great excuse to hang out inside some nicely air conditioned spaces.
On the other side of the square stands HH Richardson’s landmark Trinity Church, a building I have seen from the outside but never went in- whenever I tried in the past it was always closed for renovation work or some other reason. That some other reason this time turned out to be the damn AIA itself- their Fellows Investiture private event was being held right in the middle of Boston Fun Day, which closed the church down to non-Fellows like me. I did finally get inside the next day, part of a mad dash from and back to the convention center during a two and a half hour break between tours, a fact that explains the interior pictures and views I was otherwise denied by the AIA on Boston Fun Day.
Heading east, our next stop was a pleasant walk through the Public Gardens and Boston Commons. On my very first family trip to Boston when I was in grade school, we stayed at the Boston Sheraton (somehow that’s still there) and I very much remember back then walking from the Sheraton along Boylston Street, past Copley Square and through the gardens and commons, and as a grade school kid that walk seemed like an eternity. Now it didn’t seem all that bad, even in the heat, even on a long day of walking.
Even in that heat I was able to walk much faster than the swan boats at the Public Gardens (I was not walking especially fast, it’s just that those swan boats are insanely slow) and also was able to admire the (likely) sweating statue of Edward Everett Hale wearing a Brad Marchand Bruins sweater, a tribute to the memory of a (traded) hockey player and not to his current team (the Stanley Cup finalist Florida Panthers). I thought about stopping by the Massachusetts State House since I have been on a bit of a state house run these past few weeks (MD, PA and RI) but, since I had been there before, I decided to head right to the Park Street Station. It was starting to get late but there was still more fun left to see on Boston Fun Day.
That week long Charlie Card pass came in handy with a quick ride on the Red Line to Kendall Square and MIT, where I specifically went to see their museum which is uncreatively named the MIT Museum. While it may have an especially uncreative name, inside it had some of the best exhibit design I had ever seen in a museum with interesting things to see throughout. A definite highlight and a strong recommendation for your next trip to Boston.
It was getting late enough in the day that I needed to start worrying about closing time. Luckily the lyrics of that terrible Semisonic Closing Time song were right and every new beginning really does come from some other beginning’s end. With that in mind, I hopped on a Red Line train to Harvard to get inside the Harvard Art Museums before they shut down at 5:00 PM, and then hopped right back on the Red Line again to go right back to where I just was at MIT and Kendall Square to see one last University museum that stayed open late. So what was normally a just block and a half walk between museums was still just a block and a half walk between museums but with a two hour side trip to Harvard in between.
After all this I finally found myself at MIT’s List Visual Art Center, a small but interesting art gallery located inside a very 1980s IM Pei designed building. And while it was small, the art was interesting, the staff was friendly and the trip there (regardless of whether it was a block and a half walk or not) felt worth it.
Before leaving MIT the second time, I walked just across Ames Street from the List and then walked diagonally through the quad to see the back side of Frank Gehry’s Stata Center. I made a point to visit this building in the past but always stayed on the Vassar Street side which, in retrospect, feels a bit shortsighted. The building feels more approachable and somehow less arbitrary from the back, and the late afternoon sun on this hot day made it look better than I expected.
It was already well past 6:00PM and my next stop was one I was looking forward to but not one that I had prioritized. Back during my AIA25 City Hall tour, there was a festival set up on the plaza called the Scooper Bowl, a fundraiser where a $20 ticket got you inside where you could eat all of the ice cream you wanted. It wasn’t that busy when I saw it then and, knowing that it stayed open until 8:00 PM on Boston Fun Day, I thought it might be a great stop after all those museums and buildings and subways. Of course I was not the only person with this idea- it turns out that on the hottest day of the year (so far), all of the tickets were sold out and the line to get in stretched clear across the plaza. I briefly got on line (before going online and finding out that the advance tickets were sold out) and then sulked back to my hotel for a rare Boston Fun Day break.
I normally don’t include pictures or stories from my hotel room in these slideshows unless there’s something really unusually interesting about it, and that’s most definitely the case here in Boston. I booked through AIA25 Housing and stayed at the Yotel, my first time at one. I chose it for the location and price, which was slightly better than most of the other choices which were all (including the Yotel) hellaciously overpriced.
What separated the Yotel from any other hotel was my very small room, which I have somewhat mixed (but generally positive) feelings about. The bedroom wasn’t that much bigger than a queen sized bed, and was so small that (through a motorized button) the bed needed to roll back and convert to a kind of couch just so you could walk into the room. Truthfully there is no reason to have a giant hotel room, and the style and efficiency (and killer location) of the Yotel quickly won me over. That said, I wish the room was just like two feet longer so that I actually had room to unpack, something I never really thought much about until I didn’t have any room to do it.
Boston Fun Day ends right where we started with a return visit to ICA Boston, still my favorite building in the city. Thursday nights see extended hours and free admission at the ICA, and both were appealing enough for me to drag me back out of that tiny Yotel room after walking some twelve and a half miles all across the city on what turned out to be a very fun Boston Fun Day.
So with that it’s time to wrap up AIA25 in Boston and start looking forward to AIA26. Every year I look forward to the upcoming AIA Conference and make plans to attend no matter where it takes place, and the AIA appears to be rewarding this stance by finally coming up with a new city to hold next year’s event. So next year instead of return AIA Conferences in Boston, Washington DC, San Francisco or Chicago, it’s time to see what San Diego has to offer. Looking forward to it already.
But wait, there’s more
I go to these AIA Conferences almost every year, meaning that there’s lots of slideshows and pictures and stories from all sorts of different cities, showing off their best architecture and design for all to see.
