The square is almost entirely occupied by a privately owned and managed but publicly accessible park, Norman B. Leventhal Park, named for the Boston building manager and designer who designed it. It sits above a parking garage, named "The Garage at Post Office Square."[4][5] The garage descends to 80 feet (24m) below the surface, at the time one of the deepest points of excavation in the city. Revenues from parking fund the maintenance of the park. The 1.7-acre (0.69ha) park is a popular lunchtime destination for area workers. It features a café, fountains, and a pergola around a central lawn, and the management provides seat cushions for visitors during the summer. Designed by landscape architects The Halvorson Company, the park is also home to "125 species of plants."[6]
History
Detail of 1883 map of Boston, showing Post Office Square and vicinityPost Office Square, Boston, 1876Garage in Post Office Square that was demolished to make way for the creation of Norman B. Leventhal Park.
In the 18th century, rope manufacturers occupied the area, then it became a residential district, and later a business and commercial area. The Great Boston fire of 1872 swept through the area, and as rebuilding began the area began to be called Post Office Square after the new United States Post Office and Sub-Treasury Building which faced the square.[7]
In 1874, the headquarters of the New England Mutual Life Insurance Company, designed by Nathaniel Bradlee, was erected in the square on the site of what is now Norman B. Leventhal Park. This building was demolished in 1945, and a large parking garage which filled the area of the present park was erected, being completed in 1954.[7]
There was a transformer explosion and fire in the One Post Office Square building in December 1986. An electric company worker was killed but it was after normal business hours and the building was able to be evacuated with only a few injuries.[9]
The above-ground parking garage was demolished in 1988. The new garage, entirely underground, was opened in 1990 at a cost of $18 million,[10] and the park above it was completed in 1992.[7]
Major buildings
Significant buildings on the square include the following:
New England Telephone and Telegraph Building is a historic structure built in 1947 at 185 Franklin Street. It is a Pending Boston Landmark. A developer purchased the building in 2011 and renamed it "50 Post Office Square."[11] In this building, the laboratory in which the first telephone was built has been reconstructed.[12]
Back Bay is an officially recognized neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, built on reclaimed land in the Charles River basin. Construction began in 1859, as the demand for luxury housing exceeded the availability in the city at the time, and the area was fully built by around 1900. It is most famous for its rows of Victorian brownstone homes—considered one of the best preserved examples of 19th-century urban design in the United States—as well as numerous architecturally significant individual buildings, and cultural institutions such as the Boston Public Library, and Boston Architectural College. Initially conceived as a residential-only area, commercial buildings were permitted from around 1890, and Back Bay now features many office buildings, including the John Hancock Tower, Boston's tallest skyscraper. It is also considered a fashionable shopping destination and home to several major hotels.
Government Center is an area in downtown Boston, centered on City Hall Plaza. Formerly the site of Scollay Square, it is now the location of Boston City Hall, courthouses, state and federal office buildings, and a major MBTA subway station, also called Government Center. Its development was controversial, as the project displaced thousands of residents and razed several hundred homes and businesses.
One Federal Street is a skyscraper in the Financial District neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. Completed in 1975, it is Boston's 13th-tallest building, standing 520 feet tall, and housing 38 floors. It is very close to the Rose F. Kennedy Greenway, Faneuil Hall Marketplace. Construction of the building was completed in 1976. However, it underwent renovations between 1992 and 2011. Some of the most notable tenants include: AON Service Corporation, Morgan Lewis & Bockius LLP, Credit Suisse, J.P. Morgan, Iron Mountain, Oppenheimer, and U.S. Bank.
The Financial District of Boston is located in Downtown Boston, near Government Center and Chinatown.
Scollay Square was a vibrant city square in downtown Boston, Massachusetts. It was named for William Scollay, a prominent local developer and militia officer who bought a landmark four-story merchant building at the intersection of the Cambridge and Court Streets in the year 1795. Local citizens began to refer to this intersection as Scollay's Square, and, in 1838, the city officially memorialized the intersection as the Scollay Square. Early on, the area was a busy center of commerce, including daguerreotypist (photographer) Josiah Johnson Hawes (1808–1901) and Dr. William Thomas Green Morton, the first dentist to use ether as an anaesthetic.
Fort Point Channel is a maritime channel separating South Boston from downtown Boston, Massachusetts, feeding into Boston Harbor. The south part of it has been gradually filled in for use by the South Bay rail yard and several highways. At its south end, the channel once widened into South Bay, from which the Roxbury Canal continued southwest where the Massachusetts Avenue Connector is now. The Boston Tea Party occurred at its northern end. The channel is surrounded by the Fort Point neighborhood, which is also named after the same colonial-era fort.
Dewey Square is a square in downtown Boston, Massachusetts which lies at the intersection of Atlantic Avenue, Summer Street, Federal Street, Purchase Street and the John F. Kennedy Surface Road, with the Central Artery (I-93) passing underneath in the Dewey Square Tunnel, which was built in the Big Dig. South Station is on the southeast corner of the square, with Amtrak and MBTA Commuter Rail services, as well as Red Line subway trains and Silver Line bus rapid transit underneath.
The Pioneer Courthouse is a federal courthouse in Portland, Oregon, United States. Built beginning in 1869, the structure is the oldest federal building in the Pacific Northwest, and the second-oldest west of the Mississippi River. Along with Pioneer Courthouse Square, it serves as the center of downtown Portland. It is also known as the Pioneer Post Office because a popular downtown Portland post office was, until 2005, located inside. The courthouse is one of four primary locations where the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit hears oral arguments. It also houses the chambers of the Portland-based judges on the Ninth Circuit.
Reston Town Center is a mixed-use urban development featuring offices, apartments, retail stores, and restaurants in Reston, Virginia owned and managed primarily by Boston Properties.
Norman B. Leventhal was an American businessman, the chairman of The Beacon Companies, a developer and manager of office buildings, housing, and hotels. Leventhal was best known for his work in civic improvements to the city of Boston, and consequently had a park named after him of which he oversaw the creation.
The Langham, Boston is a luxury hotel in a historic building located at 250 Franklin Street in the financial district of Boston, Massachusetts. It is a member of The Leading Hotels of the World and managed by Langham Hotels International.
Downtown Boston is the central business district of Boston, Massachusetts, United States. Boston was founded in 1630. The largest of the city's commercial districts, Downtown is the location of many corporate or regional headquarters; city, county, state and federal government facilities; and many of Boston's tourist attractions. Similar to other central business districts in the U.S., Downtown has recently undergone a transformation that included the construction of new condos and lofts, renovation of historic buildings, and arrival of new residents and businesses. It is represented in the Boston City Council by District 2's Bill Linehan.
The Middlesex County Courthouse is a historic courthouse building in East Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was initially designed in 1814-1816 by noted architect Charles Bulfinch (1763–1844), and subsequently enlarged in 1848 by Ammi B. Young.
Milk Street is a street in the financial district of Boston, Massachusetts, which was one of Boston's earliest highways. The name "Milk Street" was most likely given to the street in 1708 due to a milk market at the location, although Grace Croft's 1952 work "History and Genealogy of Milk Family" instead proposes that Milk Street may have been named for John Milk, an early shipwright in Boston. The land was originally conveyed to his father, also John Milk, in October 1666.
Congress Street in Boston, Massachusetts, is located in the Financial District and South Boston. It was first named in 1800. It was extended in 1854 as far as Atlantic Avenue, and in 1874 across Fort Point Channel into South Boston. Today's Congress Street consists of several segments of streets, previously named Atkinson's Street, Dalton Street, Gray's Alley, Leverett's Lane, Quaker Lane, and Shrimpton's Lane.
The Seaport District, or simply the Seaport, is a neighborhood in Boston, Massachusetts. It is part of the larger neighborhood of South Boston, and is also sometimes called the Innovation District. The Seaport is a formerly industrial area that has undergone an extensive redevelopment effort in recent years. It is bordered by the Fort Point Channel to the west, Boston Harbor to the north and east, and the historic residential neighborhood of South Boston to the south. It is officially referred to by the City of Boston as The South Boston Waterfront. The Seaport District is at risk of climate-related flooding over the next 30 years.
The John W. McCormack Post Office and Courthouse, formerly the United States Post Office, Courthouse, and Federal Building, is a historic building at 5 Post Office Square in Boston, Massachusetts. The twenty-two-story, 331-foot (101 m) skyscraper was built between 1931 and 1933 to house federal courts, offices, and post office facilities. The Art Deco and Moderne structure was designed in a collaboration between the Supervising Architect of the United States Treasury Department and the Boston architectural firm of Cram and Ferguson. It occupies a city block bounded by Congress, Devonshire, Water, and Milk Streets, and has over 600,000 square feet (56,000 m2) of floor space. The exterior of the building is faced in granite from a variety of New England sources, as well as Indiana limestone. It was built on the site of the 1885 United States Post Office and Sub-Treasury Building.
The United States Post Office and Sub-Treasury Building was a public building on Post Office Square in Boston, Massachusetts. Built in the late nineteenth century, it was the first post office building in the city to be owned by the United States federal government. The John W. McCormack Post Office and Courthouse now stands on its former site.
A Once and Future Shoreline is a permanent public artwork that graphically marks the edge of Boston Harbor, circa 1630, into the granite paving blocks of the plaza on the West side of the historic Faneuil Hall building. The 850-foot-long artwork depicts the location of a pre-colonial shoreline by graphically etching silhouettes of materials that are found typically along the high tide line. The artwork offers a way to engage the imagination in an exploration of the changes to this now urban site from a salty tidal marsh, to an active pedestrian plaza.
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