Boston's Downtown Wasteland

Boston's sprawling City Hall Plaza is the plaza that Boston loves to hate. Will any improvement help?

1 minute read

January 22, 2001, 1:00 PM PST

"The fountain in City Hall Plaza here -- once hailed by Architectural Forum magazine as "Boston's answer to the Fontana di Trevi" in Rome -- went on the fritz in the 1970s and disintegrated into a weed-choked hole.Wind speed averages 24 miles per hour on a portion of the plaza's barren flats, which was rated "dangerous and unacceptable" in a 1996 engineers' study. The plaza has no outdoor cafes, just a few scraggly trees and hardly any pedestrian traffic. The main architectural element is the pavement -- a nine-acre plain of 1,246,343 bricks."

Thanks to Chris Steins

Read the full story: No Man's Land: What a To-Do With a Plaza Boston Loves to Hate

Monday, January 22, 2001 in Wall St. Journal

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