Boston City Hall and Mitchell/Giurgola Architects: Thoughts and Themes on a Competition’s “Runner-Up”

Abstract

Analysis of the unofficial runner-up in the 1961–62 design competition for Boston City Hall—the scheme by the Philadelphia-based team of Mitchell/Giurgola Architects (MGA) in association with David A. Crane and Thomas R. Vreeland Jr.—reveals not the creation of an isolated monument but a humanist restructuring of a city’s urban spaces at the heart of a modernist-inspired post-war government centre. Unusually for the time, this scheme was developed through deep dialogue with an existing urban morphology, historic buildings, and the literal “ground” of the city. This paper highlights the scheme as the first in a series of significant urban design projects undertaken by MGA in the United States..