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Post Office Square Park

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1990–1991 park structures and garage, Ellenzweig Associates; The Halverson Co., landscape. Post Office Sq.
  • Post Office Square Park (Peter Vanderwarker or Antonina Smith)

A visit to this urban oasis on a fine day will testify to its success. Organized in 1983, the Friends of Post Office Square sponsored a design competition for a much needed urban green space. At the heart of the Financial District, the “pocket park” has become the nexus of an irregular and confusing street pattern, replacing a three-story parking structure. A triangular garden space is set against a rich variety of twentieth-century buildings—the Art Deco Post Office and Federal Courthouse Building (FD1) and Verizon Telephone Headquarters, the Beaux-Arts Langham Hotel (FD4), and the red granite of the Bank of America tower (FD16.1). This welcome public space rests on a seven-level, below-grade garage, with a pedestrian entrance marked by one of two gazebo-like garden pavilions (the other serving as a café). A fountain, a pergola, and walls of planting enhance this meeting place and retreat for the denizens of the surrounding office towers.

Writing Credits

Author: 
Keith N. Morgan
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Data

What's Nearby

1 Post Office Square/Langham Hotel (Federal Reserve Bank)
Angell Memorial Park
Sovereign Bank (National Shawmut Bank)
Bank of America (Fleet Bank, First National Bank of Boston)
State Street Bank

Citation

Keith N. Morgan, "Post Office Square Park", [Boston, Massachusetts], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/MA-01-FD3.

Print Source

Cover: Buildings of Massachusetts

Buildings of Massachusetts: Metropolitan Boston, Keith N. Morgan, with Richard M. Candee, Naomi Miller, Roger G. Reed, and contributors. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2009, 64-65.

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