AIA Guide to Boston: Contemporary Landmarks, Urban Design, Parks, Historic Buildings and Neighborhoods (AIA Guides) [Paperback]

Michael Southworth (Author), Susan Southworth (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 18, 2008

The most comprehensive guide to Boston architecture ever published, AIA Guide to Boston Architecture documents the dramatic reorganization of the city by the Big Dig and other recent projects. Lucid descriptions of more than 600 sites are enlivened with history, culture, humor, and sharp opinion and are accompanied by professional b/w photography.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

This book is a superbly written history of Boston’s built environment, filled with insider details and engaging anecdotes about more than 600 buildings, including such historic landmarks as Faneuil Hall, the mansions on Beacon Hill, the commercial wharves in Boston Harbor, Fenway Park, and the Freedom Trail as well as Boston’s latest contemporary buildings such as the ICA, MIT’s Stata Center, and the infamous “Big Dig.” This guide has been completely rewritten and redesigned, with added theme tours, such as Boston Urban Design, Contemporary Landmarks, or the work of Charles Bulfinch. New, up-to-date locator maps have been created for this edition, and the glossary and index have been revised.

About the Author

Michael Southworth is Professor of Urban Design and Planning at the University of California at Berkeley, a Fellow in the American Institute of Architects, and a Charter Member of the American Institute of Certified Planners. He is also the North American editor for The Journal of Urban Design.

 

Michael and Susan Southworth have practiced urban, planning and architecture in Boston and in the San Francisco Bay area.

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: GPP Travel; 3rd edition (March 18, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0762743379
• ISBN-13: 978-0762743377
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #144,286 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #21 in Books > Travel > United States > States > Massachusetts

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Charles Bulfinch and H. H. Richardson Parade!, March 14, 2008

By 

Jon L. Albee "Faulkner Wannabe" (Houston, TX) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: AIA Guide to Boston: Contemporary Landmarks, Urban Design, Parks, Historic Buildings and Neighborhoods (AIA Guides) (Paperback)

Boston, America's London, is such an awesome ensemble of urban architecture that any author is presented with both a formidable task and the enjoyment of endless variation. With such an enormous canvas, the resulting work can be either a sloppy, undisciplined patchwork or a masterpiece. This little book is a masterpiece.

What can I say? It's exactly what an AIA-sponsored architecture catalog should be. The selection of sites is diverse, interesting and distinguished. The essays for each site are complete: They're long enough to be instructive and short enough to keep your attention. The photographs are all monochrome, but they're large, numerous and of revealing composition as to add real value to the text. There's no long introductory essay, but a simple preface to introduce the city and the book, and there's a nice set of simple, functional maps in the appendices.

The binding and the pages are sturdy to allow for hands-on field work as well as browsing. In many ways, this book resembles the AIA Guide to Detroit, which is also a benchmark for the AIA-sponsored series.

As for the architecture... Anyone familiar with Boston and the surrounding towns knows that there are thousands of noteworthy sites. This book captures about 600 of the best of them, and your favorite sites are sure to be in here, be they buildings, parks or public artwork. Since historic sites play such an important role in Boston's urban cohesion, they are appropriately represented here. Important modern structures aren't neglected either. In fact, Boston includes a real critical mass of fascinating modern buildings, all appropriately included as well.

Surprising to me is that Boston contains less colonial and Federal architecture than one might expect from its reputation and history as a colonial metropolis. There are few dense areas of unspoiled colonial or Federal urbanism, Beacon Hill and Charlestown being the obvious exceptions; rather, colonial and Federal sites tend to be widely distributed throughout the modern city. Maybe I'm just stating the obvious, but the city doesn't have the cohesive historical atmosphere and quaint sensuality of places like Charleston, South Carolina and Providence, Rhode Island, for example. It's more like Washington, DC, with its historic enclaves at Georgetown and Alexandria. That's not a bad thing, of course, but just an observation. Boston has its share of fire, neglect and urban renewal nightmares too, as this guide carefully notes. Two inexplicable omissions: Harvard Business School and the Radcliffe College buildings. Fenway, with its mindboggling cluster of important institutions, gets a bit of the short end as well.

The catalog stays largely focused within the Boston city limits, but there are nice, (almost) complete excursions to Harvard, MIT and the neighborhoods surrounding those important institutions. Each chapter begins with a brief essay describing the history, general character and orientation of the particular neighborhood, and many important historic streets and public spaces are discussed within.

If you're an architectural historian, architect, preservationist, serious enthusiast or cultural tourist, your architecture library is incomplete without this one.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "eyes up", March 23, 2009

By 

Herbert Hershfang "Ann Hershfang" (Boston. MA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: AIA Guide to Boston: Contemporary Landmarks, Urban Design, Parks, Historic Buildings and Neighborhoods (AIA Guides) (Paperback)

The AIA Guide to Boston, 2008, by Susan and Michael Southworth, is a splendid book. I read it cover to cover and loved every minute. I walk around Boston a lot and look at buildings along the way. But this Guide, with its lively stories and opinions, opened my eyes to how rich our buildings are and how much more there is to see and know about building design and local history. When the weather improves, a friend to whom I gave a copy and I are going to walk all over looking, looking.... I am reminded of a line from Dr. Seuss's first book, And To Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, "Marco, keep your eyes up and see what you can see."

Ann Hershfang