Once A Skyscraper, Soon To Be A Boutique Hotel?

"The Ames Building, a towering 14 stories at 1 Court St., reigned for more than a decade as the city's tallest skyscraper -- but that was more than a century ago.

Empty for the last eight years, a nonstarter for two would-be redevelopers, and more recently isolated by ugly concrete barriers, the exquisitely carved, historic landmark is soon to be reborn as a boutique hotel with a fine restaurant.

Designed in a combination of Byzantine and Romanesque styles by architects tutored by H.H. Richardson of Trinity Church fame, the building is undergoing $40-million-plus renovation to ready it for readmission to downtown's active urban life.

'The Ames Building is one of those structures that are flower-like, and it will be more and more appreciated as the years roll on,' one writer predicted in a pamphlet in 1891, soon after 'the most prominent and eligibly situated of Boston's great buildings' opened."