10 notable Boston buildings that didn’t exist in 2010

The decade now closing hosted an historic building boom in Boston. That boom, of course, produced numerous new buildings. Here in no particular order are 10 notable ones that didn’t exist in 2010, and that embody the scope of construction since then.

A tall tower with a glass front and brick sides.

Millennium Place. Millennium Partners-Boston opened this 15-story, 256-unit condo building at 580 Washington Street in late 2013. Handel Architects designed the luxurious property, which became the fastest-selling condo in Boston history. The project was also seen as a marker along the private-public road to making Downtown Crossing more vibrant.

Wide shot of a glassy tower looming much taller than shorter brick buildings that are in the foreground of the shot.

Millennium Tower. Speaking of Millennium Partners-Boston (and Handel Architects) and the whole millennium motif, this 684-foot glassy eruption opened in late 2016 at 1 Franklin Street. The 60-story, 442-unit condo building’s completion capped a years-long saga surrounding the former Filene’s Basement site in Downtown Crossing and helped resurrect that neighborhood’s general fortunes.

A tall, glassy building shaped like a rising wave.

East Boston library branch. Not every notable building of the past decade was a glassy spire with multimillion-dollar condos or high-shelf office space. One of those was the Boston Public Library’s East Boston branch at 365 Bremen Street. The building that William Rawn Associates designed opened in December 2013. The glass facade and the column-free interior mean the entire building is like one big room—with plenty of open air and sunlight. Bravo for functionality.

A long, glassy, somewhat squat head house for a subway station.

Government Center T head house. An $82 million renovation of the T station that services the Green and Blue lines produced not only a fully handicap-accessible facility but one with a brand-new glassy head house. Opened in March 2016, that head house remains a prominent feature of one of the Boston region’s most prominent areas—and a stark contrast to the brutalist Boston City Hall looming over it.

A capacious lobby with tall floor-to-ceiling windows and a big staircase in the middle.

Bruce C. Bolling Building. This municipal hub—it includes the headquarters of Boston Public Schools—opened in April 2015. Architecture firms Sasaki and Mecanoo designed the redevelopment of Dudley Square’s old Ferdinand Building, which almost instantly garnered praise for its inventiveness. As Globe architecture critic Robert Campbell put it: “Compared with the clueless architecture often produced by the private real estate market, the Bolling is a Taj Mahal. It is a good place to work, and it is equally good as a piece of the city.”

A long, large, rectangular-like building with a glass exterior by the side of a highway.

New Balance headquarters. That spaceship-looking building you see driving in and out of Boston on the Mass. Pike. opened in September 2015 at 100 Guest Street in Brighton. The Elkus Manfredi-designed headquarters of sneaker giant New Balance—and the anchor of a much larger New Balance-backed project called Boston Landing—the building won plaudits for that futuristic exterior and its capacious interior as well as its environmental friendliness.

An up-close, neck-craning look at a glassy apartment tower.

Avalon North Station. At 449 feet, this apartment building at 1 Nashua Street in the West End became one of the tallest residential buildings in Boston when it opened in December 2016. The 38-story spire, which CBT Architects designed and which includes 503 apartments, also exemplified the decade’s residential construction boom in Boston.

An empty office floor still under construction. — This office space—shown under construction in January 2011—would come to host the Boston Society of Architects.

Atlantic Wharf. The 436-foot, 31-story building with 88 condos and nearly 800,000 square feet of office space was described as “Boston’s newest skyscraper” when it opened in early 2011. That tells you all you need to know about development height in the city this decade. The Boston Properties-developed, CBT Architects-designed tower at 280 and 290 Congress Street was also notable for being Boston’s first LEED platinum building of any particular heft.

A boxy, triangular, glassy tower rising from a sidewalk.

Pierce Boston. Height was indeed one of the meta-development debates of the decade in Boston. Several buildings poked through the back-and-forth, however, and not necessarily all in the city’s downtown core. The 30-story, 340-foot Pierce Boston condo and apartment tower opened in March 2018 at 200 Brookline Avenue in Fenway, becoming the tallest Boston building west of Back Bay. Samuels & Associates and Landsea developed it, and Arquitectonica and CBT Architects designed it.

Looking up at one of New England’s tallest residential buildings in Boston, One Dalton. The building facade is glass. There is a construction elevator attached to the center of the building.

One Dalton. What is officially known as the Four Seasons Hotel & Private Residences One Dalton Street topped off in August 2018. And the 61-story, 742-foot tower—New England’s tallest primarily residential building—debuted its 215-room hotel portion in May 2019. Developed by Carpenter & Company, the tower is 699 feet at its highest habitable spot. One Dalton, the design of which is a collaboration between Pei Cobb Freed & Partners and Cambridge Seven Associates, also includes 160 ultra-luxury condos.

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