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Boston Architecture

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Check out Boston’s most iconic federal buildings

The style enjoyed its heyday in the city around the turn of the 18th century, with two figures in particular pioneering it locally: Charles Bulfinch and Asher Benjamin.

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Midcentury modern in Lincoln asks $1.4 million

Walter Pierce designed the airy, sleek house in the rustic redoubt, which featured in the 2019 film "Knives Out."

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Boston’s 10 tallest buildings by 2025

Coronavirus-related construction slowdown or not, these towers—including newcomers One Dalton and Winthrop Center—will dominate the city’s skyline come mid-decade.

Rustic stunner in Cambridge wants $2.5 million

The bones of the redone New England Greek Revival near Fresh Pond date from the late 1840s.

10 Boston stories that have nothing to do with coronavirus

If you need a distraction, here’s some choice writing from us about our glorious region.

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Boston’s 10 most underrated buildings, mapped

The city has plenty of incredible buildings with beautiful interiors and done in celebrated styles. Then there are those buildings that don’t quite get their proper due.

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Shingle on Cambridge’s famed Irving Street asks $4.8 million

The house that William Ralph Emerson designed at No. 110 includes six bedrooms and five bathrooms. And dig the fireplaces.

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Boston’s 15 most beautiful building interiors, mapped

The region’s renowned architecture includes striking interiors that might inspire your own home design.

Glossy Brookline contemporary on sale for $2.625M

The townhouse is the product of a renovation of a 100-year-old property near the border with Boston.

Renovated West Cambridge duplex wants $2.2M

The spread in the Riverview Condominiums near the Charles is the product of a 2018 makeover.

Vote for the Boston area’s building of the year!

Encore Boston Harbor, the Sudbury, and One Dalton are among the nominees. Which was your favorite? Polls open through December 12.

Sleek South End modern seeks $7.25M

A renovation of a circa-1867 property produced the current townhouse, which also comes with five bedrooms.

10 notable Boston buildings that didn’t exist in 2010

The selection includes soaring spires such as One Dalton and Millennium Tower, but also humbler structures such as the Government Center T station and Eastie’s library branch.

John Hancock’s 380 Stuart latest Boston project to pivot

The insurance giant plans to sell its Back Bay property instead of realizing one of the more interesting designs in recent Boston architecture.

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The best things to do in the Boston area right now

Here’s a seasonal rundown of the 26 essential places that everyone should seek out should they want to understand what makes the Boston area tick.

City green-lights Boston University’s stack-of-books building

Construction on the 19-story, 305-foot building could start in the spring of 2020.

Dorchester’s JFK library remains one of I.M. Pei’s most enduring works 40 years on

The complex in Columbia Point could’ve ended up a staid academic building. It did not.

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Boston's most iconic modern buildings, mapped

The forces behind the design of these 16 buildings read like a who’s who of architects from the past 75 years: Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier, Josep Sert, I.M. Pei, Frank Gehry, and more.

Check out the restoration of Boston University’s Castle

The Tudor revival dating from 1915 houses the school’s alumni center. Work included buffing the exterior and expanding the in-house pub.

Own the South End’s only remaining intact wood-frame house

The Haven Street spread dates from the early 1830s, and is on sale for the first time in 30-plus years.

Inside the revamped Massachusetts Senate chambers

The expansive work under the golden dome at the Massachusetts State House made the chamber more accessible and more like it was in the 1800s.

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Boston’s 15 most iconic buildings, mapped

Given its age and its history, never mind its place as New England’s most populous city, Boston is one of America’s most iconic cities. Here are the 15 buildings that represent that city to the rest of the world.

Boston City Hall turns 50

Love it or hate it—there remains no middle ground regarding the brutalist complex opened in 1969.

The 6 most interesting Boston real estate renderings of 2018

These stark depictions include one for a repurposing of the old Globe HQ to several describing a major expansion of TD Garden to another showing a BU building that will look like a stack of books.

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Boston's 10 ugliest buildings, mapped

It’s not that all of these are aesthetically unpleasing necessarily, it’s that some are just plain boring.

What’s with all the interesting architecture proposed for Boston?

The region is suddenly awash in non-boring design proposals, from Kendall Square to Charlestown to the Seaport District. Here are five to check out.

Boston University’s tallest building will resemble a stack of books

And that’s no coincidence: The 19-story tower will serve as the school’s data sciences hub.

A 108-year-old Victorian in Jamaica Plain comes out contemporary after renovation

Outside the house on 8 Greenough Avenue bears the clear hallmarks of its original construction. Inside is a different story.

Key approval nudges 690-foot Winthrop Square tower that much closer to construction

The Boston Civic Design Commission has approved Handel Architects’ glassy design.

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How to tour Beacon Hill’s architecture in two hours tops

Federal and Greek revival styles play outsized roles in this handy map because they play outsized roles in Beacon Hill.

Will the newly proposed design for the Winthrop Square Garage tower move the 690-foot project forward?

Concerns over its scope—especially its height—and its design have held up the office-and-condo building, which developer Millennium Partners first broached in 2016.

What are your biggest pet peeves about Boston’s newest architecture and design?

The region is chock-a-block full of classic and iconic architecture, no doubt about it. But what about its newest buildings?

Dock Square Garage redevelopment would include a glass facade and a stairs-like roof

Plans call for a 10-story, 133-foot addition to the seven-story garage for 195 condos. An eighth-floor amenities level would include a pool.

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7 notable Boston projects designed by black architects, mapped

Private developers in the Boston did not hire black architects for several decades, so much of the architecture in the city today designed by black people is generally of the institutional or infrastructural kind.

Inside a customized 38th-floor condo in Downtown Crossing’s Millennium Tower

These photos show the finished product of about six months’ work in what is for now Boston’s tallest residential spire.

Newton duplex part of a Henry Hobson Richardson original

Henry Hobson Richardson, one of the 19th century’s leading architects, designed 74 Ober Road in the mid-1880s as a summer house. In 1982, PBS’ This Old House transformed the property into five condos.

Getty Foundation deems Boston City Hall worth saving

The Los Angeles nonprofit has awarded a $120,000 grant designed to help preserve the building—which, depending on whom one asks, is either one of America’s most beautiful municipal hubs or one of the ugliest architectural marvels of its age.

Newton modern a meld of Samuel Glaser original and recent renovation

The late architect designed the house at 20 Drumlin Road shortly before its 1949 construction. His clients owned it well into the 21st century. Its current owners—who are selling the property—acquired it in 2009, and set about modernizing the midcentury modern.

Frank Lloyd Wright’s one Massachusetts work is a modest house in Amherst

June 8 is the 150th anniversary of the birth of the famed architect, who designed more than 1,000 properties, hundreds of which came to fruition. Only one, though, went up in our fair commonwealth.