Exchange Place Building

The Exchange Place Building is a Postmodernist skyscraper designed by WZMH Architects, and built between 1981 and 1984 in Boston, MA.

Its precise street address is 53 State Street, Boston, MA. You can also find it on the map here.

The Exchange Place rises alongside the old facade of the Boston Stock Exchange, a classic architectural piece originally built in 1896 and remodeled in 1985 to include the glass tower. A five-story atrium connects and unifies the two buildings, which are now known collectively as Exchange Place.

WZMH Architects was the architecture firm in charge of the architectural design.

That being said, architecture is a complex discipline involving many professionals from different fields, without whom this building would have not been possible. We will surely be leaving out a lot of names here, but here is a list of the people we do know also played their part in making the Exchange Place Building a reality:

• Gilbane Building Company as the Main Contractor
• Brookfield Properties as the Main Developer
• TMP Consulting Engineers Inc in charge of MEP Engineering

The Exchange Place Building can be categorized as a Postmodernist building.

The Exchange Place Building was completed in 1984. At that time Postmodernism was the prevailing style. Fresh, bold and daring, architects were exploring the freedom of designing without having to follow the strict, sometimes arbitrary rules of a specific architectural movement (which ironically became a movement itself). The Exchange Place Building was therefore every much in line with what the architecture community, and the people liked and wanted at the time.

The Exchange Place Building uses a frame structure made of steel columns and concrete and steel slabs.

A frame structure uses a combination of beams and columns to sustain the building's weight. The walls in this case are non-load bearing, which allows for more flexibility when distributing the interior spaces.

The facade uses a non-load bearing curtain wall system. This means the curtain wall modules are anchored to the building's structural frame, typically by being attached to the edge of the floor slabs. The curtain wall system connects to the slabs using brackets, anchors, and mullions, which transfer the loads imposed by wind and temperature changes, to the building's primary structural elements.

This setup allows the curtain wall to accommodate differential movement between the facade and the structural frame, such as thermal expansion, floor deflection, or sway from wind forces. This system's integration with the slab edges also allows for continuous insulation and weatherproofing layers.

From an aesthetic point of view, the facade features a continuous curtain wall system made of highly reflective blue-tinted glass with black frames. The curtain wall modules are made up of a single glass pane that can't be opened.

The facade also has a series of inset corners and setbacks that create some depth and rhythm in the volumetric composition of the tower.