Boston Government Service Center

The Boston Government Service Center is an exercise in what ifs. What if the project had been Rudolph's from the start? What if Rudolph's full plan had been constructed? What if the buildings had been preserved and updated regularly in the years since their openings?

The complex today consists of the Charles F. Hurley building and the Erich Lindemann building, along with connecting courtyards, plazas, and staircases. The Hurley building is home to state government offices related to labor and unemployment. The Lindemann building houses offices for the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health and originally included inpatient treatment facilities, although today it only runs outpatient programs and administrative offices.

The Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) originally planned for 3 separate buildings on the site, each assigned to a different architectural firm. Trying to get 3 different firms to all coordinate was not easy, and Paul Rudolph was brought in, first as a consultant for the firm assigned what is now the Lindemann building, and later as the BRA-assigned coordinating architect for the entire project. He redesigned the entire project, taking its disparate parts and reenvisioning them as a coherent and consistent whole.

Stylistically this complex is quite a departure from Jewett, but it will be familiar to anyone who knows Rudolph's most famous building, the Yale University Art & Architecture Building. If Jewett is early Rudolph, the Boston Government Service Center is mature Rudolph, fully invested in the possibilities of building in concrete. The massive forms and all concrete approach to design are firmly on the Brutalist side of modernism. But where the Yale building is constructed of rectangular masses and straight lines, the Government Service Center alternates hulking blocky forms with sinuous organic edges.

Rudolph here was also still dedicated to the use of texture in a way that calls back to his work at Wellesley. Alternating flat and bush-hammered 'corduroy' concrete surfaces punctuated by glazing on the Boston Government Service Center offer a variety of textures and catch the light in different ways. The striated concrete surfaces with exposed aggregate were something of a Rudolph signature by this point. Although there is no corduroy texturing on Jewett, the exposed concrete aggregate used throughout the building shows earlier attempts by Rudolph to play with the design possibilities offered by this material.

As always, Rudolph seized every opportunity to add stairs to the site, and he tried to include even more. Designs for the central plaza originally featured dramatic curved stairs between shallow terraces, arranged in a fan-like formation. This plan ended up not being built, and the plaza today is a much simpler flat surface with a central grassy area. The overall plan also originally included 3 buildings, but only 2 were built; the third was to be a 33-story tower providing variable height and a dramatic focus for the site. A tower of this scale of course would have included many opportunities for stairs. The project was already suffering from funding cuts, and the tower (along with some of the other more elaborate proposals for other parts of the site) was deemed too expensive.

The site has not been well-preserved, and Rudolph's love for stairs and voids meant that many areas have been provisionally (or permanently) fenced off. Bringing the entire site into compliance with current safety regulations would be both complicated and expensive, and because it has been neglected for so long, parts of it have fallen into such disrepair that they would be difficult (and, again, expensive) to bring back to good condition. The site is close to Boston City Hall and easily accessible from multiple subway stops; it still has the potential to be an important resource for the public, and architectural preservationists are working to convince city and state agencies that this architecturally fascinating site can and should be restored, not razed.