the abbreviated reign of “neon” leon spinks

SWEAT THE DETAILS 153
story reminder that, no matter how bold the vision or bright the mind of
the visionary, everyone needs to sweat the details.
Whose Is Bigger?
The story begins with Robert Slater, who in the mid-1960s was the
aggressive, take- no- prisoners chairman of Boston- based Hancock. His
company’s chief rival, the carpetbagging New Jersey–based Prudential
Insurance Company, had the audacity to christen a massive fi fty-twostory
building in 1965 that was just a few blocks from Hancock’s existing
headquarters. This profoundly irritated Slater, according to Carter Wiseman,
author of a comprehensive account of the Hancock episode, “no
matter that [the Prudential building, or ‘Pru’] drew instant public derision
for its graceless bulk.” Slater resolved to build something bigger.
Comparative contests like this have played out since men’s locker
rooms were invented, but few have played out on this scale. Make of it
what you will, but the first design developed in 1966 by Pei’s fi rm—and
enthusiastically endorsed by Slater—was a tall, cylindrical masonry shaft
with two low-rise buildings clustered at its base. Edward J. Logue, head
of the Boston Development Authority, also endorsed that initial design,
saying: “If you don’t understand a company wanting to go taller, you don’t
understand life.”
But the company hesitated, and during the year that followed it
reevaluated its space needs. Hancock eventually asked the architects to
come up with a different plan, and due to scheduling and other concerns
at the architectural firm, the project fell primarily to Cobb, one of Pei’s
partners and a Boston native. “We were never directed to make it taller
than Prudential, but we understood in a fairly clear way that it should be,”
recalled Cobb, who set to work on September 15, 1967, to design what
would become the tallest building in all of New England—sixty stories of
pure, up- yours phallotecture.
Size wasn’t the only consideration, of course. Years later, Cobb said
he designed his building “to restore to Copley Square the dignity it had