The nearly 700-foot-tall South Station Tower is slated for completion this summer. Photo © Antonio Medina, click to enlarge.

“We worked diligently to integrate a contemporary design for the tower, which, in its curved form, pays homage to the frontage of the landmarked station,” says PCP partner Graham Banks. “At the concourse, with its scale and arches, we had civic ambitions.”

Boston’s Classical Revival South Station opened in 1899 and was designed by Boston-based practice Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge (its successor firm, Shepley Bulfinch, is alive and well). The station consolidated numerous lines within the city, and, at the time of construction, had the largest train shed in the world. But, like other American train depots, midcentury trends, including suburbanization and air travel, wrought its untimely demise. BPDA purchased the station from New York & New Haven Railroad in 1965, a few years after the company went bankrupt, and shuttered the terminal. Significant portions of the building were then demolished to make way for an office tower and a United States Postal Service annex.

The remains of South Station were ultimately sold to the MBTA in 1978 (though the BPDA retained a share of the air rights), which marshaled funding for its renovation and reopening. That project, completed in 1989, included the pouring of footings along the length of the tracks for a potential overbuild. A bus terminal, designed by The Architects Collaborative, was added in 1995. To the annoyance of commuters, the terminal was located a block south of the station’s headhouse; original plans to link the two were scrapped due to lack of demand for additional gates.

Today’s megadevelopment was first approved in 2006 and was scheduled to break ground in 2008, until the Great Recession scuttled those plans for nearly a decade. Hines and PCP went back to the drawing board in 2016, and construction of the current iteration began in 2020. The developer began work on the bus terminal’s multistory steel superstructure while simultaneously conducting work that would enable the tower’s foundations. The terminal’s expansion, when complete, will increase capacity by 50 percent and, importantly for commuters, will provide additional access points to, and completely cover, the formerly exposed rail platforms below.

The South Station Tower base rests on steel trusses that reach down to its narrow foundation through eight reinforced-concrete megacolumns. In less capable hands, that herculean structural move could be lost in such a wildly complex project but, instead, PCP took advantage of the monumental proportions to insert the station’s new concourse, nearly 60 feet tall.

The arches are clad with precast-concrete panels while lime-based plaster was used for the vaults. Photo © Jason O’Rear

The tessellated, precast-concrete parabolic arches follow the contours of the branching beams above them and meet the eight colossal columns at the ground. For the vaults, the design team studied several different material options, including metal panels, but ultimately chose a lime-based plaster for its acoustic and weather-resistant properties.

The tower will comprise approximately 680,000 square feet of Class A commercial office space and 166 high-end apartments. The next two phases of the development, located above the bus terminal, are dependent on its completion and market conditions. They could include up to 1 million square feet of office, residential, hotel, or laboratory space. PCP expects to begin design for both phases in 2026.

Until then, The Great Space, as the concourse has been dubbed, is a welcome addition to South Station, and, with its invocation of an earlier era, is a more fitting entry point into one of America’s great cities.

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