11 Beaux Arts marriage of architecture and public space In the late 19th century, Victorian mansions sprang up on fashionable streets, including on Mass Ave downtown Generally, except for corner turrets, Victorian architecture did not acknowledge the street But by about 1900, new owners along the western part of Mass Ave favored showier Beaux Arts and neoclassical designs, whose goal was to be admired by friends and the public on the busy thoroughfare An example is the boxy Victorian house Curtis Hillyer built on the elevated corner of Mass and Florida Avenues at 2121 Mass (now the Cosmos Club) 21 In 1900, the new owners, railroad magnate Richard Townsend and his wife Mary, asked their architect to revamp Hillyer’s place to resemble Le Petit Trianon at Versailles The architect kept the entrance floor above grade but added a driveway to wind up from the street, behind the second- row lindens, to the main door and then wind back down to the street in a flowing series of views 22 The result is more than a house or even a mansion, but a unity of architecture and landscape that embraces and enhances the avenue’s impressive public space 2121 Mass and the avenue... Fig. 17 (above) As built by Hillyer; Fig. 18 (top right) After Townsend enlargement; Fig 19 (bottom right) The winding drive in 1970. Arrows point to the same second row linden tree, likely planted in 1880. See Fig. 4. Prior to 1898 1945 1970 “The Beaux Arts ‘salon’ whether indoors or as a public garden ...unlike the Victorian ...[attempted]…to produce a totality, a marriage between structure and adjacent public space.” —Commission of Fine Arts, Massachusetts Avenue (1975)23 Principle: Embrace the public space
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