the abbreviated reign of “neon” leon spinks

Lesson #14
SWEAT THE DETAILS
the sixty-story john hancock guillotine
If you’re going to build a masterpiece of modern high- rise
architecture, make sure the five- hundred- pound windows
don’t fall out during windstorms.
AS MUCH OF Boston slept on January 20, 1973, a nasty storm with
winds gusting to 75 miles per hour raked the city’s recently transformed
skyline, including the sixty-story John Hancock Tower, a glass-sheathed
architectural sensation that was almost finished after nearly a decade of
corporate egomania, visionary design, public debate, engineering fi ascoes,
and nonstop controversy. The slow-motion disaster that began to unfold
that night would reverberate for decades, reshaping the careers of some of
the nation’s finest architects, challenging long-held engineering assumptions,
and, some say, redirecting the course of modern architecture.
That the building existed at all that night was a marvel. It had risen
from the fl oor of the early American city like the monolith from 2001: A
Space Odyssey, and from the very beginning the icy prism—dramatic,
elegant, enigmatic—had driven the locals wild. The giant John Hancock
Mutual Life Insurance Company had decided to build its new headquarters
on four compact acres across St. James Avenue from Copley Square, a
hallowed public space to the city’s residents as well as the site of historic
Trinity Church, where Boston’s establishment had worshiped since 1877.
It also was next door to the venerable Copley Plaza Hotel, as well as near