Rebirth for Boston

To Boston's Mayor John B. Hynes, the event all but defied description. "The only thing within my memory that comes anything near it," said he, "was Halley's comet. And that didn't stay very long. This will be with us forever. The city of Boston is about to be reborn."

What Mayor Hynes was cheering about was the unveiling last week of a mammoth project that will cost some $100 million and, on completion in 1962, will spread over twice as big an area as Manhattan's famed Rockefeller Center. The builder: Prudential Insurance Co. of America, second biggest U.S. insurance company (after Metropolitan Life).

The Pru project, to be built on-a 31-acre site in Boston's Back Bay area near Copley Square, will transform a gritty industrial area into a modern metal-and-glass city-within-a-city. Much of it will be built over the train yards of the Boston & Albany Railroad. Huge pilings will be driven into the ground to form a foundation for the project's centerpiece: a $50 million skyscraper, 50 stories tall, 40% of which will be used by Prudential for its regional headquarters. Around its huge tower, the Pru will also build a complex of airy, modern stores, an 800-seat restaurant, a series of smaller apartment towers housing 1,250 families. In addition, the Pru will probably help finance a 1,000-room hotel on the site, which will be one of Boston's biggest, and the city itself will spend up to $7,500,000 for a circular, 6,000-seat auditorium and convention hall. Finally, as a bow to modern, motorized living, the new Center will have underground parking for 5,000 cars, and since the buildings will take up only 30% of the site, the entire project will be landscaped with tree-shaded plazas and malls, reflecting pools, fountains and sculpture.

For the Pru, the new Boston center was one more move in President Carroll M. Shanks's campaign to decentralize the company's insurance and investment business, put it in closer touch with its customers around the U.S. Since 1948, President Shanks has spent millions to move large chunks of the Pru's business from its Newark headquarters to regional offices in Los Angeles, Houston, Minneapolis, Jacksonville, Toronto and Chicago. Said Shanks: "Our projects apparently stimulated other people to invest and press forward for a developing local economy. The same will be true in Boston. We expect more and more investments to go into New England to bring it the glory and prosperity it deserves."

Union Carbide & Carbon Corp., which once considered moving its home from Manhattan to suburban Westchester County, last week announced plans for a new office in the city. Next year Union Carbide will start work on a 52-story, $46 million steel-and-glass skyscraper on the Park Avenue site of the old Marguery hotel, expects to move in early in 1960.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.