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Deconstructing the Dainty Dot

DotSoon, all that will be left are the ghosts.

Demolition crews are, finally, tearing down the hulking old Dainty Dot Hosiery building on Kingston Street, where Chinatown meets the Leather District and the Greenway. Once they're done with the 123-year-old building, construction crews will start work on a 26-story apartment building. So if you want to see a reminder of when the area was filled with clothing factories, you need to get down there soon.

More on the building's history - which started when it was erected after the Great Fire of 1872.

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Dainty gutting

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Comments

What a shame.

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You'd think they'd take a clue from other developers and gut the building, but reuse the facade and outside walls on the ground floors.

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Mr. Shen at the BRA was presented with that option and shot it down. The BRA essentially told the developer to tear down the historic building!

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My guess is because it added time to the project and they were worried about construction and noise?

Brightcove on the corner of congress street did so, but took quite a while. But the building is really, really nice now.

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The original proposal for the Dot site included saving the facade and having a more sculptural tower. Mr. Shen stated that the design "would distract people from the Greenway", so instead we got a boring glass box and a high quality historic facade obliterated.

Landmarks is a joke and serves no purposed beyond blocking projects not held in favor by politicians. Hence why good projects get killed over insignificant buildings and gems like the Dot, and soon Shreve's, can get murdered without nary a tear.

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It is too bad they are tearing down this handsome historic building to put up generic luxury apartments to be occupied by rich people with no sense of the history of Boston.

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..right out of my mouth.. Why couldn't they do what the developers did with the Ames Building on Court Street? That building has amazing architecture and it was preserved pretty nicely.. At least on the outside, I have not set foot inside yet.

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The interior was really well done--worth a visit, either in person or to the website. It isn't a historical renovation so much as the outside, but it is a hip contemporary hotel on par with any I've seen-- but with historical touches (eg., bar tables have glass tops with colonial area smoking pipes arranged underneath, with the cool effect of having a cocktail in a museum exhibit or something.

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That is one of the coolest buildings downtown.

Stupid developers. This is why we can't have nice things.

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The BRA is a bad joke. Kairos Shen and his minions have absolutely zero regard for streetscape, so get ready for another depressing pre-fab box of the sort the BRA has promoted in the Seaport. The next to go will be the former Shreve building at Boylston and Arlington. Shen has expressed a preference for so-called "background buildings" ... and the BRA's favored style is Charles River Park Revival. Why should developers aim for anything better when the agency that oversees them has the architectural sensibilities of the Taliban?

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...but you have to work for it. Instead of whining why don't you find out how expensive it is for developers to save building facades, and invest in buildings where developers have done that, like the Albert Pope.

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The problem isn't the cost. It's the BRA.

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Another piece of Old Boston to be torn down, and replaced with a McBuilding. A crying shame.

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