The second annual Curbed Boston Cup, our award for the Hub neighborhood of the year, is under way with 16 enclaves vying for the prestigious fake trophy. We'll have two match-ups per day this week, and all the results and the full tourney bracket will be reviewed on Friday. Voting for each pairing ends after 24 hours. Let the eliminations commence!
The tourney continues with two districts, the Leather and the Financial.
The tiny Leather District had some big happenings in 2012, including the groundbreaking for 120 Kingston, a 240-unit apartment tower on its border with Chinatown and the Financial District. It also remained one of the more desirable residential areas of Boston proper, where a three-bedroom's about as hard to find as a cab there at 2 a.m.
For the Financial District, 2012 marked either: its rebirth or the moment where Father O'Grady gets called in for extreme unction. Indeed, real estate brokers in June openly clucked about the neighborhood's need to rebrand itself (prompting us to hold a vote on a new name); and Paul McMorrow wrote in Boston Magazine just last month that Back Bay's commercial rents were besting the Financial District's. Still, all was not grim: Plans were floated this year for a Federal Street site to host what could be Boston's tallest tower.
· The Project That Ate the Dainty Dot Gets Under Way [Curbed Boston]
· Boston's 3-BR Condos: Where They Sell, For How Much [Curbed Boston]
· Time to Rename the Financial District! [Curbed Boston]
· Boston's Tallest Tower, Take Two [Curbed Boston]