The
John Hancock Tower, officially named
Hancock Place and known colloquially as
The Hancock, is a 60-story, 790-foot (241 m)
skyscraperA skyscraper is a tall, continuously habitable building. There is no official definition or height above which a building may clearly be classified as a skyscraper...
in
BostonBoston is the capital and largest city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is considered the economic and cultural center of the region and is sometimes regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England"...
. The structure, the tallest in the city, was designed by I.M. Pei and
Henry N. CobbHenry N. Cobb is an American architect and founding partner with I.M. Pei of Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, an international architectural firm based in New York City....
of the firm now known as Pei, Cobb and
FreedJames Ingo Freed was an American architect born in Essen, Germany during the Weimar Republic.His family, which was Jewish, fled to the United States when he was 9 to escape the regime of Nazi Germany....
and was completed in 1976. In 1977 the
American Institute of ArchitectsThe American Institute of Architects is a professional organization for architects in the United States. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the AIA offers education, government advocacy, community redevelopment, and public outreach to support the architecture profession and improve its public image...
presented Cobb with a National Honor Award for the John Hancock Tower. The John Hancock Tower has been the
tallest building in Boston for over 30 years, and is also the tallest building in
New EnglandNew England is a region of the United States. It is located at the northeastern corner of the US, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean, Canada and the state of New York, consisting of the modern U.S...
and the
172nd tallest building in the world.
Its street address is 200 Clarendon Street.
The
John Hancock Tower, officially named
Hancock Place and known colloquially as
The Hancock, is a 60-story, 790-foot (241 m)
skyscraperA skyscraper is a tall, continuously habitable building. There is no official definition or height above which a building may clearly be classified as a skyscraper...
in
BostonBoston is the capital and largest city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is considered the economic and cultural center of the region and is sometimes regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England"...
. The structure, the tallest in the city, was designed by I.M. Pei and
Henry N. CobbHenry N. Cobb is an American architect and founding partner with I.M. Pei of Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, an international architectural firm based in New York City....
of the firm now known as Pei, Cobb and
FreedJames Ingo Freed was an American architect born in Essen, Germany during the Weimar Republic.His family, which was Jewish, fled to the United States when he was 9 to escape the regime of Nazi Germany....
and was completed in 1976. In 1977 the
American Institute of ArchitectsThe American Institute of Architects is a professional organization for architects in the United States. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the AIA offers education, government advocacy, community redevelopment, and public outreach to support the architecture profession and improve its public image...
presented Cobb with a National Honor Award for the John Hancock Tower. The John Hancock Tower has been the
tallest building in Boston for over 30 years, and is also the tallest building in
New EnglandNew England is a region of the United States. It is located at the northeastern corner of the US, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean, Canada and the state of New York, consisting of the modern U.S...
and the
172nd tallest building in the world.
Its street address is 200 Clarendon Street. The company uses both "Hancock Place" and "200 Clarendon Street" as mailing addresses for offices in the building. The John Hancock companies were the main tenants of the tower, but the insurance company announced in 2004 that some offices will relocate to a new building at 601 Congress Street. It sits prominently near
Copley SquareCopley Square, named for the American portraitist John Singleton Copley , is a public square located in the Back Bay neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. A bronze statue of Copley, by sculptor Lewis Cohen, is located on the northern side of the square...
in Boston's Back Bay.
Like all large, heavily glazed buildings, the tower requires substantial
air conditioningAn air conditioner is a home appliance, system, or mechanism designed to dehumidify and extract heat from an area, or provide heat to an area. The cooling is done using a simple refrigeration cycle...
year round—even with its reflective walls. Its cooling system is similar to that used in the
IDS CenterThe IDS Center is the tallest building in Minneapolis and the state of Minnesota at 792 feet . Opened in 1974 as the IDS Centre, it stood 775 feet 6 inches , though a 16-foot garage for window washing equipment was added at a later date...
in
Minneapolis, MinnesotaMinneapolis is the largest city in the U.S. state of Minnesota and is the county seat of Hennepin County. The city lies on both banks of the Mississippi River, just north of the river's confluence with the Minnesota River, and adjoins Saint Paul, the state's capital. Known as the Twin Cities,...
.
Design
Tall, skinny glass structures were a goal of modernist architecture ever since
Mies Van Der RoheLudwig Mies van der Rohe, born Maria Ludwig Michael Mies was a German-American architect. He was commonly referred to and addressed by his surname, Mies, by his colleagues, students, writers, and others....
proposed a glass skyscraper for
BerlinBerlin is the capital city and one of sixteen states of Germany. With a population of 3.4 million within its city limits, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city and the eighth most populous urban area in the European Union...
. Such buildings as
Gordon BunshaftGordon Bunshaft was a 20th century architect educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Born in Buffalo, New York where he attended Lafayette High School, an architecturally significant building, Bunshaft was a modernist whose early influences included Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier...
's
Lever HouseLever House, designed by Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill and located at 390 Park Avenue in New York City, is the quintessential and seminal glass box International Style skyscraper. It is the pioneer curtain wall skyscraper in New York City. The 92 meters tall building features an...
, Mies'
Seagram BuildingThe Seagram Building is a skyscraper in New York City, located at 375 Park Avenue, between 52nd Street and 53rd Street in Midtown Manhattan. It was designed by the German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, in collaboration with the American Philip Johnson and was completed in 1958. It is 515...
, and
Frank Lloyd WrightFrank Lloyd Wright was an American architect, interior designer, writer and educator, who designed more than 1,000 projects, which resulted in more than 500 completed works....
's
Johnson Wax HeadquartersJohnson Wax Headquarters , the world headquarters and administration building of S.C. Johnson & Son, Inc. in Racine, Wisconsin was designed by American architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, for the company's president, Herbert F. "Hib" Johnson. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1976 as...
attempted this goal, but many of these designs retained structural artifacts that prevented a consistent, monolithic look.
In 1972, Pei and Cobb's design of the Hancock Tower took the glass monolith skyscraper concept to new heights. The tower is an achievement in minimalist,
modernistModernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes both a set of cultural tendencies and an array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society in the late...
skyscraper design.
Minimalism was the design principle behind the tower. The largest panes of glass possible were used. There are no
spandrelA spandrel is the space between two arches or between an arch and a rectangular enclosure.There are four or five accepted and cognate meanings of spandrel in architectural and art history, mostly relating to the space between a curved figure and a rectangular boundary - such as the space between...
s panels, and the
mullionA mullion is a structural element which divides adjacent window units.Mullions may be made of any material, but wood and aluminum are most common, although stone is also used between windows. Mullions are vertical elements and are often confused with transoms, which lie horizontally...
s are minimal. Pei and Cobb added a geometric modernist twist by using a
parallelogramIn geometry, a parallelogram is a quadrilateral with two sets of parallel sides. The opposite or facing sides of a parallelogram are of equal length, and the opposite angles of a parallelogram are equal...
shape for the tower floor plan. From the most common views, this design makes the corners of the tower appear very sharp. The highly reflective window glass is tinted slightly blue, which results in the tower having only a slight contrast with the sky on a clear day. As a final modernist touch, the short sides of the parallelogram are marked with a deep vertical notch, breaking the tower's mass and emphasizing its verticality.
A major concern while designing the tower was its proximity to
Boston's Trinity ChurchTrinity Church in the City of Boston, located in the Back Bay of Boston, Massachusetts, is a parish of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts. The congregation, currently standing at approximately 3,000 households, was founded in 1733. The current rector is The Reverend Anne Bonnyman...
, a concern that required redesigning the tower's plans, as there was a public outcry when it was revealed that the Hancock Tower would cast its shadow on the church.
Problems with the building
It was a much-anticipated landmark from the country's most respected design firm. Unfortunately, the tower was once more notorious for its
engineeringEngineering is the discipline, art and profession of acquiring and applying technical, scientific and mathematical knowledge to design and implement materials, structures, machines, devices, systems, and processes that safely realize a desired objective or inventions.The American Engineers' Council...
flaws than for its
architecturalFor a topical guide to this subject, see Outline of architecture. Architecture is the art and science of designing and constructing buildings and other physical structures for human shelter or use....
achievement. Its opening was delayed from 1971 to 1976, and the total cost is rumored to have rocketed from $75M to $175M. It was an embarrassment for the firm, modernist architects, and the architecture industry.
Foundation
Hancock Tower was plagued with problems even before construction started. During the excavation of the tower's foundation, temporary steel
retaining wallA retaining wall is a structure that holds back soil or rock from a building, structure or area. Retaining walls prevent downslope movement or erosion and provide support for vertical or near-vertical grade changes. Cofferdams and bulkheads, structures that hold back water, are sometimes also...
s were erected to create a void on which to build. The walls warped, giving way to the clay and mud fill they were supposed to hold back. The inward bend of the retaining walls damaged utility lines, the sidewalk pavement, and nearby buildings—even damaging the historic
Trinity ChurchTrinity Church in the City of Boston, located in the Back Bay of Boston, Massachusetts, is a parish of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts. The congregation, currently standing at approximately 3,000 households, was founded in 1733. The current rector is The Reverend Anne Bonnyman...
across the street. Hancock ultimately paid for all the repairs.
Falling glass panes
Inventing a way to use the blue mirror glass in a steel tower came at a high price.
The building's most dangerous and conspicuous flaw was its faulty glass windows. Entire 4' x 11', 500 lb (1.2 x 3.4 m, 227 kg) windowpanes detached from the building and crashed to the sidewalk hundreds of feet below. Police were left closing off surrounding streets whenever winds reached 45 mph (72 km/h). According to the
Boston Globe, a scale model of the entire Back Bay was built in MIT's Wright Brothers
Wind TunnelA wind tunnel is a research tool used in aerodynamic research. It is used to study the effects of air moving past solid objects.-Theory of operation:Wind tunnels were first proposed as a means of studying vehicles in free flight...
to identify the problem. The research raised questions about the structural integrity of the entire building (due to unanticipated twisting of the structure), but did not account for the loss of the glass panels. An independent laboratory eventually confirmed that the failure of the glass was due to oscillations and repeated thermal stresses caused by the expansion and contraction of the air between the inner and outer glass panels which formed each window; the bonding between the inner glass, reflective material, and outer glass was so stiff that it transmitted (instead of absorbing) the force to the outer glass and eventually caused it to fail.
In October 1973, I.M. Pei & Partners announced that all 10,344 panes would be replaced by a single pane, heat-treated variety, costing between $5 million and $7 million. During the repairs, plywood replaced the building's empty windows, earning it the nickname "Plywood Ranch" (the same name as a suburban lumber yard chain at the time), and the joke that it was "the world's tallest plywood building".
Nauseating sway
The building's upper-floor occupants suffered from motion sickness when the building swayed in the wind. To stabilize the movement, a device called a
tuned mass damperA tuned mass damper, also known as an active mass damper or harmonic absorber, is a device mounted in structures to prevent discomfort, damage, or outright structural failure caused by vibration...
was installed on the 58th floor.
As described by Robert Campbell, architecture critic for the
Boston Globe:
- Two 300-ton weights sit at opposite ends of the 58th floor of the Hancock. Each weight is a box of steel, filled with lead, 17 feet (5.2 m) square by 3 feet (0.9 m) high. Each weight rests on a steel plate. The plate is covered with lubricant so the weight is free to slide. But the weight is attached to the steel frame of the building by means of springs and shock absorbers. When the Hancock sways, the weight tends to remain still... allowing the floor to slide underneath it. Then, as the springs and shocks take hold, they begin to tug the building back. The effect is like that of a gyroscope, stabilizing the tower. The reason there are two weights, instead of one, is so they can tug in opposite directions when the building twists. The cost of the damper was $3 million.
The dampers are free to move a few feet relative to the floor.
LeMessurier ConsultantsWilliam James LeMessurier was a prominent American structural engineer.Born in Pontiac, Michigan, LeMessurier graduated with an AB from Harvard, went to Harvard Graduate School of Design and then earned a master's degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1953. He was the founder and...
says the dampers are located in relatively small utility rooms at each end of the building, leaving most of the 58th floor usable.
According to Robert Campbell, it was also discovered that—despite the mass damper—the building could have fallen over under a certain kind of wind loading. Ironically, it could tip over on one of its narrow edges, not its big flat sides. Some 1,500 tons of diagonal steel bracing were added to prevent this, costing $5 million.
Closure of the observation deck
An observation deck with spectacular views of Boston was a popular attraction. It was closed after the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks and remains closed as of fall 2009 (like the
Transamerica PyramidThe Transamerica Pyramid is the tallest and most recognizable skyscraper in the San Francisco skyline.Although the building no longer houses the headquarters of the Transamerica Corporation, it is still strongly associated with the company and is depicted in the company's logo.Designed by architect...
in San Francisco). Because of the closure of the John Hancock Tower's observation deck, the highest observation deck in Boston that is open to the public is in the
Prudential TowerThe Prudential Tower, also known as the Prudential Building or, colloquially, as The Pru, is a skyscraper in Boston, Massachusetts. The building, a part of the Prudential Center complex, currently stands as the 2nd-tallest building in Boston, behind the John Hancock Tower. The Prudential Tower was...
.
The building's owners cite security as the reason for the continued closure, but have used the deck for private functions and have expressed intent to replace it with more office space. Boston officials contend that security concerns are moot, since most similar attractions have long since reopened, and that a public observation deck was a requirement for the original building permits, though the city can't seem to produce documentary evidence.
2009 foreclosure and auction
In 2006, Broadway Partners acquired Hancock Place for $1.3 billion. By 2009, they had defaulted on the loans they used to buy the building, and it fell into
foreclosureForeclosure is the legal and professional proceeding in which a mortgagee, or other lien holder, usually a lender, obtains a court ordered termination of a mortgagor's equitable right of redemption. Usually a lender obtains a security interest from a borrower who mortgages or pledges an asset like...
. On March 30, 2009, Hancock Place was sold at
auctionAn auction is a process of buying and selling goods or services by offering them up for bid, taking bids, and then selling the item to the highest bidder...
for $660 million (of which $640 million was to pay off the seller's debt) to a
consortiumA consortium is an association of two or more individuals, companies, organizations or governments with the objective of participating in a common activity or pooling their resources for achieving a common goal....
of Normandy Real Estate Partners and Five Mile Capital Partners. The companies had been slowly increasing their investment over the previous months.
Note on company name
The company that built the Hancock Tower and two earlier similarly-named buildings is known loosely as "
John Hancock InsuranceJohn Hancock Financial is a loose term for a major United States insurance company which existed, in various forms, from its founding on April 21, 1862, until its acquisition in 2004 by the Canadian insurance company Manulife Financial. It was named in honor of John Hancock, a patriot...
," or simply "John Hancock." It was known as "The John Hancock Life Insurance Company" in the 1930s and "The John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Company" in the 1940s. As of 2000, the company owning the buildings was "John Hancock Financial Services, Inc." with various subsidiaries such as "The John Hancock Variable Life Insurance Company" and "Signator Investors, Inc." In 2003, the company was acquired by the Canadian
Manulife Financial CorporationManulife Financial Corporation , also known as The Manufacturers Life Insurance Company, is a major Canadian insurance company and financial services provider...
, but still uses the name "John Hancock Financial Services, Inc." and those of various subsidiaries.
See also
- Prudential Tower
The Prudential Tower, also known as the Prudential Building or, colloquially, as The Pru, is a skyscraper in Boston, Massachusetts. The building, a part of the Prudential Center complex, currently stands as the 2nd-tallest building in Boston, behind the John Hancock Tower. The Prudential Tower was...
for an image of the Boston skyline from Cambridge in 1963, with the old 26-story Hancock building a conspicuous landmark.
- List of tallest buildings by U.S. state
- List of tallest buildings in Boston
External links