One Beacon Street Building

The One Beacon Street Building is an International Style skyscraper designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, and built between 1971 and 1972 in Boston, MA.

One Beacon Street Building is not the only name you might know this building by though. The building is, or has also been known as Employers-Commercial Union Companies.

Its precise street address is 1 Beacon Street, Boston, MA. You can also find it on the map here.

The building has been restored 2 times over the years to ensure its conservation and adaptation to the pass of time. The main restoration works happened in 1991 and 2018.

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill 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 at the very least we know that there was one other part involved, that was Turner Construction as the Main Contractor.

The One Beacon Street Building can be categorized as an International Style building.

The One Beacon Street 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 window wall system, which by itself is non-load-bearing. However, in this case, the facade is technically load-bearing, since there are structural elements that have been integrated into it, adirectly influencing the facade’s design.

Window walls are easier to install than curtain walls, often resulting in reduced construction time and cost. However, the exposed edge of the slabs, and in this case other structura elements too, are weak points in terms of thermal insulation. These areas need to be carefully detailed to prevent thermal bridging and potential condensation issues.

From an aesthetic point of view, the facade features a regular grid of prefabricated concrete panels in a reddish tone. Within this grid there are windows with dark frames. The windows are placed a couple of feet toward the inside, giving the facade some depth and creating a game of shadows that changes throughout the day.

The 12th and last floors are technical floors. They are higher than regular floors and have metal grids instead of windows.