Hey, there! Log in / Register

Brit confirms: There is an uglier building in Boston than City Hall

In a rant on the world's ugliest buildings, Jason Farago at the Guardian calls that ugly state building at Cambridge and Staniford that houses various mental-health agencies one of the world's most hideous buildings.

OK, granted, he also calls it "this arm of Boston’s City Hall," but nobody's perfect. True, both are technically part of Government Center, but so is the JFK Building.

H/t Brad.


Ad:


Like the job UHub is doing? Consider a contribution. Thanks!

Comments

IMAGE(https://elmercatdotorg.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/statebldgmerimackfrog.jpg)

up
Voting closed 0

Remnants of corrugated cardboard look better than that building's exterior.

up
Voting closed 0

The Lindeman Center is the epitome of design that's actively contraindicated for a building's planned use. Imagine being a paranoid schizophrenic going for treatment in a building that has sharp jagged walls and looks like a frog staring at you! Textbook case of inappropriate form for function.

up
Voting closed 0

I've often said that if you weren't crazy when you went in that building you definitely would be when you came out. I thought it had actually be shut down, but apparently not. It is one of the worst decisions ever made--creating that building as a mental health center.

up
Voting closed 0

I was always curious about those swirling things that seem like staircases all over the Staniford Street side. Do those actually go anywhere?

And the real problem with that building is that it is just so filthy looking. Isn't there a way to power wash it or something?

up
Voting closed 0

The stairs lead to no where - except to the inner courtyard, but otherwise they don't lead to like a specific door or anything.

up
Voting closed 0

The State rents suicide fence. One months rent can pay for the whole fence to own it. The fence has been rented for over 5 years. That's our tax dollars hard at work.

up
Voting closed 0

There's also an absurd amount of underused or unused space in that building. Too bad they can't move some of Ashburton Place into it. Something about zoning vs psych concerns means it will pretty much always be empty iirc.

up
Voting closed 0

The Hurley building with it's jagged concrete facade just sucks up the dirt and grime of the city and makes it look even more depressing. It seems to have a permanent dark rain cloud over it.

up
Voting closed 0

A fascinating article about the Lindemann Center....

http://www.michelekohmorollo.com/resources/Article_Samples/Architeture_a...

up
Voting closed 0

" Rudolph tried to recreate the hallucinogenic or exaggerated mental and emotional states of the insane with neverending inchoate corridors, a chapel with a dismal atmosphere and macabre twisting stairways, one of which, like an oubliette in a medieval keep, leads nowhere. The building’s dramatic structures and subliminal imagery (there is a thinly veiled frog’s head looking out from the building’s facade) make the Lindemann Center very expressive, but also foreboding and dangerous. With a romanticised view of mental illness, Rudolph made the building “insane” in the hope that it would sooth those who dwell in it by reflecting the insanity they feel within."

up
Voting closed 0

This building gets pointed out to tourists on many a duck/trolley tour, mainly because a scene in The Departed was filmed on one of the staircases to nowhere (with Leonardo DiCaprio and, I think Vera Farmagia)

up
Voting closed 0