Copley Square

Brief information

Copley Square was originally called Art Square: there were so many 19th-century cultural and educational institutions around it that the old name sounded almost like a description of its function. Part of this role can still be read in the buildings around the square: among them are churches, a library, a hotel, and a skyscraper from different eras.

The shape of the square is no accident either. Originally, Huntington Avenue crossed it diagonally, but in 1961 the street was cut off at its intersection with Dartmouth Street, and Copley Square acquired its present outline. At the same time, part of the space was paved over and a pyramidal fountain was built. That is why the square is interesting not only for the facades along its edges: its layout preserves the trace of an earlier urban pattern, which was changed for the sake of a new organization of space.

What to notice first

It makes sense to compare the buildings around the perimeter as a short scale of architectural languages. Old South Church belongs to the Gothic Revival: this style is important here as an early layer of the square from the 1870s. Next to it, Trinity Church shows another choice from the same era: the Romanesque Revival style. The Boston Public Library adds a late-19th-century Renaissance Revival facade, while the Fairmont Copley Plaza continues the line of grand urban architecture in the Beaux-Arts style.

The sharpest contrast is provided by the John Hancock Tower. The 240-meter-tall late modernist skyscraper of 1976 stands in the same space as historic buildings and changes the scale of the square: the former “square of the arts” begins to read as a place where the 19th-century city and the business Boston of the second half of the 20th century have ended up side by side. Separately, one can note the pyramidal fountain that appeared after the 1961 redesign: this is no longer a trace of the old cultural square, but of its modern reconfiguration.