American House (Boston)

Government Center is an area in downtown Boston, centered on City Hall Plaza. Formerly the site of Scollay Square, it is now the location of Boston City Hall, courthouses, state and federal office buildings, and a major MBTA subway station, also called Government Center. Its development was controversial, as the project displaced thousands of residents and razed several hundred homes and businesses.Controversial in design since before it was completed, the use of Brutalist architecture for its main buildings, as well as the open brick-and-concrete plaza at the center of the development, have been alternately praised for its innovative design, and scorned for its lack of character and uninviting appearance. After decades of calls for a redesign to make it more friendly and usable, a major rebuild of City Hall Plaza, the main public space of Government Center, was begun in 2020 and is to include additional seating areas, play spaces for children, and space for public art.

City Hall Plaza in Boston, Massachusetts, is a large, open, public space in the Government Center area of the city. The architectural firm Kallmann McKinnell & Knowles designed the plaza in 1962 to accompany Boston's new City Hall building. The multi-level, irregularly shaped plaza consists of red brick and concrete. The Government Center MBTA station is located beneath the plaza; its entrance is at the southwest corner of the plaza.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy Federal Building is a United States federal government office building located in the Government Center area of Boston, Massachusetts, adjacent to City Hall Plaza and diagonally across from Boston City Hall. An example of 1960s modern architecture, and designed by Walter Gropius and The Architects Collaborative with Samuel Glaser, it is a complex that consists of two offset 26-floor towers that sit on-axis to each other and a low rise building of four floors that connects to the two towers through an enclosed glass corridor. The two towers stand at a height of 387 feet (118 m). The complex was built in 1963-1966. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2021.

The Quincy House was a hotel in downtown Boston, Massachusetts, United States. Located on the corner of Brattle Street and Brattle Square in the neighborhood of Scollay Square, it was in operation for most of the 19th and early 20th centuries, before it was closed in 1929. It was the largest hotel in Boston in the late 19th century, and was a popular destination for prominent guests to the city. It also served as a major headquarters for labor unions in Boston.

"Cop slide" refers to an internet meme and viral phenomenon caused by a video of a police officer tumbling down a childrens' slide in the playground of Boston City Hall Plaza. The video became viral on TikTok in August 2023, causing an influx of visitors using the slide and prompting enforcement of restrictions on its use by the city, as well as scientific analysis of the initial incident.

Thermopylae is a 1966 bronze sculpture by Dimitri Hadzi, installed at Boston City Hall Plaza near the John F. Kennedy Federal Building, in Boston's Government Center, in the U.S. state of Massachusetts.

The Boston Planning & Development Agency (BPDA), formerly the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA), is a Massachusetts public agency that serves as the municipal planning and development agency for Boston, working on both housing and commercial developments. As an agency concerned with urban planning, the BPDA does not consider requests for zoning variances from individual property owners. These are heard by the city's own Zoning Board of Appeals, a seven-person body appointed by the Mayor of Boston.Some consider the BPDA's roles as both real estate owner and developer, and approval authority over private development projects, to be a conflict of interest.

Boston City Hall is the seat of city government of Boston, Massachusetts. It includes the offices of the mayor of Boston and the Boston City Council. The current hall was built in 1968 to assume the functions of the Old City Hall.It is a controversial and prominent example of Brutalist architecture, part of the modernist movement. It was designed by the architecture firms Kallmann McKinnell & Knowles and Campbell, Aldrich & Nulty, with LeMessurier Consultants as engineers.Together with the surrounding plaza, City Hall is part of the Government Center complex. This project constituted a major urban redesign effort in the 1960s, as Boston demolished an area of substandard housing and businesses. The building has been subject to widespread public condemnation, and is sometimes called one of the world's ugliest buildings. Calls for the structure to be demolished have been regularly made even before construction was finished. Architects and critics considered it to be excellent work, with one poll finding that professional architects describe Boston City Hall as one of the ten proudest achievements of American architecture.

The Brattle Street Church (1698–1876) was a Congregational (1698 – c. 1805) and Unitarian (c. 1805–1876) church on Brattle Street in Boston, Massachusetts.

Brattle Street, which existed from 1694 to 1962, was a street in Boston, Massachusetts located on the current site of City Hall Plaza, at Government Center.

The Crawford House was a hotel and restaurant in downtown Boston, Massachusetts. Located on Court and Brattle Streets in Scollay Square, it was in operation during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and was for a time among the leading hotels in the city. The building was demolished in 1962 as part of the Government Center project.

Boston (US: , UK: ), officially the City of Boston, is the capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States and 24th-most populous city in the country. The city proper covers about 48.4 sq mi (125 km2) with a population of 675,647 in 2020, also making it the most populous city in New England. It is the seat of Suffolk County (although the county government was disbanded on July 1, 1999). The city is the economic and cultural anchor of a substantially larger metropolitan area known as Greater Boston, a metropolitan statistical area (MSA) home to a census-estimated 4.8 million people in 2016 and ranking as the tenth-largest MSA in the country. A broader combined statistical area (CSA), generally corresponding to the commuting area and including Providence, Rhode Island, is home to some 8.2 million people, making it the sixth most populous in the United States.Boston is one of the oldest municipalities in the United States, founded on the Shawmut Peninsula in 1630 by Puritan settlers from the English town of the same name. It was the scene of several key events of the American Revolution, such as the Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party, the Battle of Bunker Hill, and the siege of Boston. Upon American independence from Great Britain, the city continued to be an important port and manufacturing hub as well as a center for education and culture. The city has expanded beyond the original peninsula through land reclamation and municipal annexation. Its rich history attracts many tourists, with Faneuil Hall alone drawing more than 20 million visitors per year. Boston's many firsts include the United States' first public park (Boston Common, 1634), first public or state school (Boston Latin School, 1635) first subway system (Tremont Street subway, 1897), and first large public library (Boston Public Library, 1848). Today, Boston is a thriving center of scientific research. The Boston area's many colleges and universities make it a world leader in higher education, including law, medicine, engineering and business, and the city is considered to be a global pioneer in innovation and entrepreneurship, with nearly 5,000 startups. Boston's economic base also includes finance, professional and business services, biotechnology, information technology and government activities. Households in the city claim the highest average rate of philanthropy in the United States; businesses and institutions rank among the top in the country for environmental sustainability and investment.