Government Service Center (Boston)


The Government Service Center is an unfinished, Brutalist structure by architect Paul Rudolph. It is one of the major buildings in the Government Center complex in downtown Boston, Massachusetts, at Cambridge, Staniford, and New Chardon Streets.
The building is not consistently known by a single name. Older sources variously call it the Government Service Center, the State Services Center, or the State Health, Welfare and Education Service Center. Many sources, especially contemporary sources, incorrectly use the Hurley or Lindemann names to refer to the whole.
In 1962, when the building was still being designed, an act was passed designating the Health, Welfare and Education Service Center as the "Joseph A. Langone, Jr., Memorial Center" and calling for the commission to "erect at a suitable location in said center, a marker, tablet, or other inscription bearing said designation." Joseph A. Langone, Jr., was a Massachusetts state senator in the 1930s.

Structure

The building comprises two connected parts, the Charles F. Hurley Building and the Erich Lindemann Mental Health Center. The Hurley section houses the Division of Unemployment Assistance and other offices of state government.
The structure includes a two-level parking garage which is largely hidden from view beneath the courtyard.
The building occupies most of a large superblock created when Boston's old West End was destroyed in the name of urban renewal. The area was formerly crisscrossed by narrow streets.

Design

Rudolph was the coordinating architect on the project and was assisted by M.A. Dyer, Desmond & Lord, and Shepley, Bulfinch, Richardson & Abbott. The structure was designed in contrast to the City Hall a few blocks away and inspired by the idea of an amphitheatre that would allow citizens to experience civic dramas unfold. Rudolph viewed the grandiose and monumental quality of the structure as appropriate to the aims of the Great Society.
The building's exterior and interior surfaces make extensive use of Rudolph's signature ribbed, bush-hammered concrete, first employed in his earlier Yale Art and Architecture Building. This building's forms mingle the rectilinearity of the Yale design with extravagant curved forms like those in Rudolph's contemporary Endo Laboratories building on Long Island. Most of the curves are in the baroque, extravagant Lindemann section.

History

The design process began in 1962. Construction began in 1966 and lasted into 1971. Rudolph was initially hired to build only one of the three structures on the complex, but developed a design linking them together.
The mural in the Hurley lobby, painted on plaster, is by Costantino Nivola.
Though the building is very large, it is technically unfinished. The original design centered on a 23-story tower which was never built. Swirling terraces in the courtyard, shown in Rudolph's site plan, were also not built.
In 1999 the remaining space was filled with the Edward W. Brooke Courthouse, by Kallmann McKinnell & Wood, which is in a completely different architectural style. At around the same time the courtyard area was landscaped and features such as stairways, an elevator, and a wheelchair access ramp were added. While the additions match the style of the original building, they can be distinguished from up close by the different style of ribbed concrete used, which lacks rough exposed aggregate.
Other than the landscaping in the courtyard, the building has never undergone significant restoration or renovation and appears rather weathered and neglected today. The edges of the sweeping, curved exterior stairways are crumbling, exposing the rebar inside. The exterior plaza on the north side, shown in Rudolph's original drawings as full of benches, trees, and people, is now a parking lot with a chain link fence around it.
The building offers many benches and sheltered and concealed spots, which are used by the local homeless population to take refuge from the weather and rest or sleep. In 2008, the state attached signs to the exterior discouraging these uses. Officially, the property is closed to the public on evenings and weekends, but this policy is seldom enforced.
Until 2019, many of the exterior staircases, terraces, and niches were fenced off because the side walls were not tall enough to meet modern safety codes. A set of curved steel panels was installed along the edges of the plaza, allowing the chain-link fencing to be removed.
In October 2019, the Massachusetts Division of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance announced that it was seeking a private developer to build a mixed-use development on the part of the complex where the Hurley Building now stands. Preservationists have indicated their opposition to demolition of the building.

Reputation

The building is listed in George Everard Kidder Smith's Source Book of American Architecture: 500 Notable Buildings from the 10th Century to the Present.
The building is featured in the 2006 film The Departed. In the movie it is a police headquarters and most of the major characters work there. There are several shots of the exterior and numerous scenes were filmed in the interior offices.

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