Located at the southeast corner bordering on Copley Square, the 60-story, 790-foot-high tower, according to local boards, violated zoning ordinances by exceeding height and bulk limitations and, above all, by its scale in relation to the monumental structures of Copley Square, the Boston Public Library ( BB42), and Trinity Church, Boston ( BB37). Now acknowledged as Boston's most extraordinary skyscraper, the Hancock was fraught with controversy from its inception in 1966. The greatest concentration of tall buildings, however, grew at the eastern end, from State Street to South Station. The Prudential Center ( BB79) and the Hancock were two of the earliest exemplars of this concept, reinforced by later, shorter commercial and apartment buildings. This spine would divide but respect the historic neighborhoods of Back Bay to the north and the South End to the south. City planner and MIT professor Kevin Lynch, a key member of this committee, envisioned a corridor of tall buildings stretching west from the financial district along the line of the underutilized railroad and recently completed Massachusetts Turnpike. In 1960–1961 a committee of the Boston Society of Architects developed recommendations for a new master plan for the central city. As the “New Boston” rose in the era of urban renewal, pressure to lift the historic height limitations increased. The city's commitment to height limits continued until the 1960s, reinforced by a long period of economic stagnation. First the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in 1899 and then the United States Supreme Court on appeal in 1903 confirmed the constitutionality of height limitations, forcing the lowering of Westminster's top floor. The developers pushed ahead with their original design that exceeded this limit by six feet, forcing the attorney general to take them to court. While this new apartment hotel was under construction, the legislature enacted a ninety-foot limit for the buildings on the south and west sides of Copley Square. Ironically, the John Hancock Tower, still the tallest structure in New England, rises on the site of Westminster Chambers, the first building to challenge zoning height limitations following the crisis invoked by Haddon Hall ( BB19). Boston was a leader in resisting tall building throughout much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
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