Boston Common - Niche Media - A side of Boston that's anything but common.
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LEFT: Fan Pier in the Back Bay is attracting both visitors and developers to the waterfront. BELOW LEFT: Boston's John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum, designed by I.M. Pei (BELOW RIGHT). B eyond brick and mortar, glass and steel, the Waterfront is also a story about soil and water. What was once a landfill languishing away as a parking lot is now being transformed into lush, verdant green space. Landscape architect Gary Hilderbrand of Reed Hilderbrand is one of the men responsible for this green revival. A professor in practice at Harvard Graduate School of Design, Hilderbrand says we must first look back to where landscape architecture took root in Boston before we can fully appreciate what's being done today. He points to Frederick Law Olmsted as the first protector of Boston's green spaces, and credits him for European travels, and he returned to the States committed to creating a new American standard in architecture, what became known as Richardsonian Romanesque. No edifice epitomizes this style more than Trinity Church in the Back Bay, its masculine spires looming over Copley Square and pointing to the future of Boston's architecture. The pillars Bulfinch and Richardson left behind have since been adorned by generations of architects, builders, and developers from around the world, each leaving his own unique mark on the cityscape. For instance, if Bulfinch is the greatgrandfather of the city's architecture, one could say 96-year-old Ieoh Ming Pei is one of its uncles. With a family lineage that traces back to the Ming Dynasty, I.M. Pei immigrated to the United States in 1935 and went on to study architecture at MIT continued on page 119 116 PHOTOGRAPHY BY PAUL MAROTTA/GETTY IMAGES (LIBRARY); DARIO CANTATORE/GETTY IMAGES (PEI) king of a billion-dollar real estate empire. Fallon's first major development in Boston came in his mid 20s when working on Copley Place with JMB Realty. "The Back Bay at that time in the '80s was a lot different than it is today," Fallon says. "It was an area that needed something to connect the neighborhoods." The development of Copley Place linked Newbury Street to the Prudential and tied the rest of the Back Bay together. Some 30 years later, Fallon views the Innovation District as having the same potential. "The Waterfront had the same element of missing pieces," he says. "I saw the ability to connect pieces of an area and make it a mix of uses." The Waterfront was a developer's dream that Fallon saw coming. He watched as the Big Dig connected the inner city with this forgotten parking lot that once housed Boston's heavy industry. He anticipated how the new Boston Convention Center would draw thousands of people in search of places to dine, stay, and spend their money. Others pitched shovels into the Waterfront—men like Nick Pritzker and Anthony Athanas—but it was Fallon who ultimately developed the most coveted site, Fan Pier. He bought the 21 acres between John Joseph Moakley Courthouse and Pier 4 for $115 million from Nick Pritzker in the third round of an auction in 2005. The aptly named pier folds into Boston Harbor, providing spectacular water views. The site has since given rise to such stunning mixed-use buildings as One Marina Park Drive, Fallon's 18-story crown jewel designed by Elkhus Manfredi Architects, which juts out from the center of the pier like a diamond. "The most important part for me, as we look through developments, is the timing," Fallon says, "because all the different uses that we bring to a site—whether it's retail, life science, residential, office, and in Fan Pier, a marina—all these different uses are on their own cycle, and you have to understand the rhythm of a project to know when it's the right time to build that use." By all measures, as Fan Pier continues to grow, Fallon was right on time. BOSTONCOMMON-MAGAZINE.COM 112-119_BC_F_Men_LateFall_13.indd 116 9/16/13 6:48 PM