Boston City Hall

Citizen complaint of the day: Thank goodness the men's room outside the mayor's office is OK

A nose-holding citizen reports from City Hall:

toilet in mens bathroom on 6th floor of city hall (outside clerks office) is broken again. cant breathe in there and unsanitary.

Connoisseurs of City Hall men's rooms know the public facility on the fifth floor, right outside the mayor's office, is usually serviceable and gives you a feeling of owning the joint since it's a single-staller that is probably bigger than some department heads' offices.

Mike Ross: If City Hall won't build a school for Back Bay/Beacon Hill, use empty space in City Hall

City Councilor Mike Ross, who represents the two neighborhoods, says parents there have the lowest odds of winning the school assignment lottery of any in the city and that he's getting tired of being repeatedly put off by school and BRA officials - eight years after they rejected a proposal by parents to buy a private building and just give it to the city for a school.

The effort to site a school that serves downtown families should be prioritized. Parents have not soon forgot when in 2003 the city walked away from an opportunity to purchase a school on Brimmer Street from Emerson College. The total cost of purchase and renovation would have been approximately 14 million dollars, a fraction of what a school would cost today. Today the Brimmer Street location is home to a private school. Eight years later the school department and the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) say that they are "working on a solution." Their meetings need to be transparent and open to the public. Their solutions need to be more imaginative. ... If the Boston team cannot find a location for a downtown school they need to get more creative. Somewhere within the monolith of City Hall there must be space for a school. Perhaps the pitter-patter of tiny shoes will get the BRA motivated to try harder. Even the Parkman House on Beacon Street could be put to use.

Boston City Hall is uglier than a seven-story picnic basket

Matthew Yglesias makes the case (and yes, there really is a seven-story tall picnic basket, in Newark, OH).

Via Robert David Sullivan.

Do I have to identify myself?

Rosaria Salerno
City Clerk
http://www.cityofboston.gov/citycouncil/cc_video_library.asp?id=646

Do I have to identify myself?

If you wish. If you may.

Rosaria Salerno, City Clerk, 149 Massachusetts Avenue, Boston
http://www.cityofboston.gov/government/

You may just want to adjust the mike, I think there might be a

Is it not on?

Is it on? It doesn't

At the base

So let me just start. To answer your second question first, yes, well, people should be able to find out anything, so yes I agree.

Protest against moving City Hall

It would be like moving Fenway Park to Stoughton.

Especially to the warehouse district.

Another reason to leave City Hall alone


Count me a fan of Boston City Hall (though not its plaza). Apparently, the few who share my opinion are no longer citing the architectural value of the widely loathed misunderstood landmark. They're pitching its access as a reason to keep in standing where it is (and not move it down to the Aquarium site in a multi-building swap that may or may not include a tower-to-be-named-later).

It's also not very green to tear down a 40-year-old building. There's a lot of embedded energy -- the energy used to construct it -- that would be wasted in the energy-intensive process of building something else on the site. A lot of energy was used building City Hall. Let's not waste more energy tearing it down and building something else.