Copley Square
The Copley Square is a public space in the Boston District Back Bay in the state of Massachusetts of the United States . It was named after the portrait painter John Singleton Copley , who donated the land to the city for the construction of the square. A bronze statue of Copley by sculptor Lewis Cohen stands at the north end of the square. The Boston Marathon ends every year in the immediate vicinity of the square .
Boundaries and history
According to historian Douglass Shand-Tucci , the look of Victorian Copley Square was largely shaped by the Brahmins of Boston from 1865 to 1915 in order to create an agora of the arts and sciences and of faith and learning in the New World .
The development began with the establishment of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on the premises of Copley Square and continued with the settlement of the Museum of Fine Arts , the New England Museum of Natural History (now the Museum of Science ), and Trinity Church , the Old South Church , the Boston Public Library , the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , the Massachusetts Normal Art School (now the Massachusetts College of Art ), and the Horace Mann School for the Deaf . Boston University , Emerson College, and Northeastern University followed in later years . This made Copley Square the center of the Boston education system , which in the 20th century was an important part of the intellectual capital of the entire United States.
The space is bounded by Boylston Street to the north, Clarendon Street to the east, St. James Street to the south and Dartmouth Street to the west. The building land was created after the Back Bay Fens were backfilled in 1858. Originally, Huntington Avenue ran diagonally from southwest to northeast across the square. The Museum of Fine Arts was on the south side, where the Fairmont Copley Plaza hotel is now. MIT's founding buildings stood on the northeast corner until the institute moved to its new campus in Cambridge in 1916 .
In 1966 Huntington Avenue at the corner of Dartmouth Street and St. James Avenue was cut, and the current shape of the square took shape. To this end, the entire area was paved, lowered by around 3.7 m and a pyramid-shaped fountain sculpture was added.
By 1983, public dissatisfaction with the lack of green space and sight lines had grown so great that the Copley Square Centennial Committee was formed. A series of public meetings and seminars established design guidelines for a new park. In 1989 a nationwide competition was held and today's design was chosen as the winner. The new Copley Square Park was inaugurated in 1991 . A year later, the committee was re-established as Friends of Copley Square and has since worked as a non-profit organization that is funded by donations and takes care of the green spaces, fountains, monuments and statues on the square.
architecture
The Copley Square is probably the only place where architectural works of world rank of the styles of Gothic Revival , revolutionary architecture and new building are gathered. Trinity Church and the Boston Public Library , in particular, form perhaps the most famous confrontation in the history of American architecture. Copley Square attractions are listed below in chronological order.
- The Old South Church , completed in 1873, was designed by Charles Amos Cummings and Willard T. Sears in the Venetian Gothic style, which was largely developed by John Ruskin (1819-1900). The building is a National Historic Landmark .
- Chauncy Hall School , built in 1874, was a tall Victorian brick building with tall gables and stood on Boylston Street near Dartmouth Street until 1908 . The high school for boys, founded by Gideon Thayer in 1828 , was merged with the then girls' school in Chapel Hill to form today's Chapel Hill - Chauncy Hall School in 1971 and moved to Waltham .
- In 1876 the Museum of Fine Arts , designed by John Hubbard Sturgis and Charles Brigham in neo-Gothic style , was completed. It was originally located on the south side of the square, but was demolished to make way for the Copley Plaza Hotel after moving to the Fenway – Kenmore neighborhood in 1910 .
- Just a year later, in 1877, the Trinity Church, designed by Henry Hobson Richardson in the neo-Romanesque style, was completed on the east side of the square. This building is also registered as a National Historic Landmark .
- The SS Pierce Building , built in 1887, was designed by S. Edwin Tobey and served as the headquarters of SS Pierce & Co. , founded in 1831 by Samuel Stillman Pierce . In 1958 the house was torn down to make way for a parking lot. Today the site is part of Copley Place Shopping Center .
- In 1895 the McKim Building of the Boston Public Library was completed on the west side of the square. The name goes back to the architect Charles Follen McKim , who designed it in the Renaissance style. In the history of 19th-century American architecture, it only competes with the Capitol in Washington, DC The building is listed as a National Historic Landmark and shows notable detail work by John Singer Sargent , Edwin Austin Abbey , Puvis de Chavanne , Augustus Saint- Gaudens and Daniel Chester French .
- The Copley Plaza Hotel was completed in 1912 and designed by Henry Janeway Hardenbergh in the style of Beaux Arts architecture . It stands where the Museum of Fine Arts used to be.
- In 1976 the John Hancock Tower was inaugurated as the headquarters of the John Hancock Insurance company . The building was designed by Henry N. Cobb , together with Ieoh Ming Pei founding partner of Pei Cobb Freed & Partners . The design is based on a proposal by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe for a glass skyscraper in Berlin and is 60 stories high and the narrow side is turned towards the square, so that it does not overshadow Trinity Church or the square itself. At 241 meters tall, it is the tallest building in New England .
- The 1992 postmodern Bostix kiosk in the northwest corner of the square was designed by Graham Gund and is based on the design of pavilions in Paris .
Farmers market
A farmers market is held in Copley Square every Tuesday and Friday from mid-May through the Tuesday before Thanksgiving , where farmers and other local food producers sell their wares from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. The main items sold are fruits, vegetables, spices, honey, baked goods, cheese, meat from local producers, as well as garden plants and cut flowers. The market is spread over the south, west and north borders of the square.
traffic
Directly under the place stops at Copley the Green Line of the MBTA . MBTA Commuter Rail and Orange Line trains can be reached at the nearby Back Bay station . The MBTA bus lines 9, 10, 39, 55, 503 and 502 stop on the south side of the square .
Photo gallery
The MIT (left) and New England Museum of Natural History (right) on Boylston Street and Berkeley Street, circa 1870
The Chauncy Hall School , ca.1881
Laying of the foundation stone on the McKim Building of the Boston Public Library on November 28, 1888
Copley Plaza , 1920
The Copley Square , 2005
The Trinity Church , 2007
The Hancock Tower , 2007
literature
- Aldrich, Megan. Gothic revival. Phaidon Press Ltd: 1994. ISBN 0-7148-2886-6 .
- Bunting, Bainbridge. Houses of Boston's Back Bay: An Architectural History, 1840-1917. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press: 1967. ISBN 0-674-40901-9 .
- Esther Forbes and Arthur Griffin. The Boston Book. Houghton Mifflin Company: 1947.
- Holtz Kay, Jane . Lost Boston. Houghton Mifflin: 1999. ISBN 0-3959-6610-8 .
- Shand-Tucci, Douglass. "Built in Boston, City and Suburb, 1880-2000". Little, Brown. (3rd edition) 1999.
- Shand-Tucci, Douglass. "Renaissance Rome and Emersonian Boston: Michelangelo and Sargent, between Triumph and Doubt," Anglican Theological Review, Fall 2002, pp. 995-1008.
Individual evidence
- ^ Douglass Shand-Tucci: Gods of Copley Square. (No longer available online.) Back Bay Historical, archived from the original on October 13, 2014 ; accessed on March 9, 2012 (English). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
Web links
Coordinates: 42 ° 20 ′ 59.2 " N , 71 ° 4 ′ 35.7" W.