The Liberty Hotel in Boston is Most Excellent. Not only is it beautifully designed, it has a fascinating history. Taken from their website, here is what The Liberty Hotel has to say:
"Completed in 1851, the original building was a collaboration between architect Gridley James Fox Bryant, widely considered Boston’s most accomplished architect of the time, and Rev. Louis Dwight, a prominent Yale-educated penologist whose travels shaped his interest in and advocacy for prison reform. Thought to be one of the best examples of the “Boston Granite Style” of the mid-19th century, the building “resonated with a strength and dignity appropriate for the era and for Bostonians’ sensibilities,” said historians.
In 1973, after 120 years of housing some of Boston’s most notorious criminals, prisoners revolted because of poor living conditions and the jail was declared unfit and in violation of the inmates’ constitutional rights. On Memorial Day weekend 1990, the last prisoners were moved to the new Suffolk County Jail. In 1991, Massachusetts General Hospital acquired the obsolete property and sought proposals for its reuse, requiring that significant elements of the building be preserved. In 2001, Carpenter & Company was designated the developer of the project, and entered into a lease agreement with MGH for the land and the jail itself.
The transformation of the site into a hotel is the work of a team of designers and architects collaborating with historians and conservationists from the Massachusetts Historical Commission, the Boston Landmarks Commission, the National Park Service and the Boston Redevelopment Authority to ensure that the end result is a careful balance between preservation and dynamic new use.
Shown here are some snapshots of the dramatic, innovative and sophisticated Liberty Hotel. I especially love the name of it's signature restaurant... "Clink".
