21 Boston – 29 – Cornered

As more of the exterior finishes get completed the form of the final building becomes visible. This is particularly noticeable at the project corners, as here at the corner of Queen Anne Avenue and Crockett Street.

The exterior materials have been selected and located to give the building a kind of visual language that explains what’s happening in the interior. The large, black facades have been “framed” by the light tan brick outlines that, along with the corner setback, emphasize the important visual character of the housing. This will be enhanced at the street level by a band of red brick (just starting to be visible – look behind the stop sign on the lower right) which will add as a ‘wrapper’, signaling where the retail shops, including Safeway, are located.

Just up Crockett Street, the scale of the housing along 1st Avenue North gets a different treatment.

Here, the housing above is white, with a strong base of dark brick that wraps the townhouse apartments that anchor the project along First Avenue. Although a little difficult to make out in this view, this is also where the housing levels have multiple set-backs to provide terraces that take advantage of the sunny, south-facing orientation.

The north-east corner of the project features Building A, which houses the leasing and management offices at grade level and creates a strong vertical statement above.

It’s still hard to make out the facade here because of the scaffolding and the fact that it’s proceeding in stages; but it’s clear that it will have distinctive top and bottom floors.

And finally, at Queen Anne Avenue and North Boston Street, the project steps back to provide a recessed corner wrapping around the existing street-level retail.

I suspect that these retail merchants are looking forward to the construction being succeeded by several hundred new resident/shoppers. The general plan is for the new Safeway store to open this fall, followed by the housing next spring.