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Prudential Center Review
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Prudential Center
- Address: 800 Boylston St., Back Bay, Boston, MA | Map It
- Phone: 617/236-3100; 617/859-0648 for Skywalk
- Category: Stores/Malls
- Location: Back Bay
Fodor's Review:
The only rival to the John Hancock's claim on Boston's upper skyline is the 52-story Prudential Tower, built in the early 1960s when the scale of monumental urban redevelopment projects had yet to be challenged. The Prudential Center, which replaced the railway yards that blocked off the South End, now dominates the acreage between Boylston Street and Huntington Avenue two blocks west of the library, and adds considerably to the area's overabundance of mall-style shops and food courts. Its enclosed shopping mall is connected by a glass bridge to the more-upscale Copley Place. As for the Prudential Tower itself, the architectural historian Bainbridge Bunting made an acute observation when he called it "an apparition so vast in size that it appears to float above the surrounding district without being related to it." Later modifications to the Boylston Street frontage of the Prudential Center effected a better union of the complex with the urban space around it, but the tower itself floats on, vast as ever. The Hynes Convention Center (617/424-8585) is connected to the Prudential Center; there's also a branch of the Greater Boston Visitors Bureau here, in the center court of the mall. Prudential Center Skywalk, a 50th-floor observatory atop the Prudential Tower, offers panoramic vistas of Boston, Cambridge, and the suburbs to the west and south -- on clear days, you can even see Cape Cod. You can see sailboats skimming the Charles River, the redbrick expanse of the Back Bay, and a glimpse of the precise abstract geometry of the nearby Christian Science Church's reflecting pool. There are also interactive exhibits on Boston's history; the Skywalk is one of the attractions on the Boston CityPass.
- Metro: Copley, Prudential Center
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