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lost through the construction of the Prudential tower.” He oriented the
parallelogram structure on the property so that it showed one of its two
slim surfaces to the square, and he ditched the masonry idea and went
with a skin of solid glass that not only would reflect and honor the more
traditional buildings around it, but would essentially blend with the sky
and clouds overhead. He also designed vertical, off-center grooves in the
building’s small sides to create the illusion of less bulk.
The locals, still smarting from Hancock’s choice of an upstart New
York architect, weren’t appeased. One critic called it “a monster.” Even
Logue, who’d endorsed giving the job to the Pei firm, called the Cobb
design “an outrage,” and the redevelopment design board of the city opposed
its construction. The whining continued through the August 1968
groundbreaking, and it intensified after the ground beneath the nearby
church and hotel began to shift during the digging of the foundation. But
the criticism faded as the building rose. “Cobb’s emphasis on proportion
was paying off,” wrote Wiseman in the 2001 revised edition of his Pei biography,
I. M. Pei: A Profile in American Architecture. “The slab was indeed
enormous, but its slim profile had incontestable grace, and because
of its unconventional siting at an angle to the street, its impact on Copley
Square was not nearly as oppressive as many had feared.”
When the structure was finished and the windows were installed,
the effect was complete. The Boston skyline had a sparkle it had never had
before, a stunning and elegant counterpoint to the high-rise stump that
was the Pru. The city also had an additional 2 million square feet of offi ce
space. Sixties radical Abbie Hoffman later stood on the steps of the nearby
library and shook his fist at the gleaming represen tation of corporate
might and said, “There is the enemy,” but the building seemed destined to
rise above even the tumultuous times in which it was spawned.
Then came the windstorm that began nudging the massive windows
from the building’s sparkling face. During the single night of that
January storm in 1973, according to the Boston Globe’s Robert Campbell,
at least sixty-five shattered and dropped “like sequins off a dress.”