The total demolition of an iconic old Irish pub in Boston Dec. 2, part of an ongoing project to transform the property into a more than 57,500-square-foot mixed-use development, surprised.residents of the city’s Jamaica Plain neighborhood.
Doyle’s Café was a popular watering hole for politicians for decades and also featured in the 2003 film Mystic River before it closed in 2019 after nearly 140 years in business.
While residents understood that the original design of the project includes a restaurant with a rooftop deck and a four-story residential building. asked to rescue parts of the existing building, the project owner said doing so was ultimately not feasible.
“It just wasn’t part of what we were told was going to happen,” he says Pete Fraunholtz, member of the Stoneybrook Neighborhood Association covering the project located at 3484 Washington St. “That wasn’t part of the plan. It’s not what we were sold, so it’s not that much [feeling] sad how it feels like a bait and switch.”
The design of the project, approved by the Boston Planning and Development Agency (BPDA), was “To selectively tear down and rebuild the facade … with new fenestrations and brick,” says Lee Goodman of Watermark Development Inc., owner of the Boston-based project.
While the original project plans called for the demolition and selective reconstruction of the facade, the project team ended up demolishing the entire old pub because it became structurally unsound.
Rendering by Scales Architecture courtesy City of Boston
As a longtime Jamaica Plain resident who frequented Doyle’s, I delved into this story after reading disgruntled posts about the demolition on the neighborhood’s Facebook group. My wife’s aunt, Joy Silverstein, is also a member of the Stoneybrook Neighborhood Association.
Although my reports indicate no evidence of illegal or inappropriate activity on the part of the developer, I know how difficult it is for big cities like Boston to control neighborhood developments that residents tend to be emotionally attached to. Cities and residents struggle with this developers have their right to demolish buildings without landmark status, such as Doyle’s.
But in my opinion, residents are right to bemoan the failure of the owners to be proactivetransparent about what they do.
Rescue attempts
The developer says he meant well.
The project team tried to “reclaim the floor system and exterior walls and sister to create the new window and door openings” seen in the project renderings while lowering the entire floor system to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act, Goodman said.
But Goodman said after BPDA’s approval, the Boston Water and Sewer Commission (BWSC) notified it that it was prohibited add structural load to Stony Brook Conduit: An important 13-foot diameter. drainage tunnel that carries about one-third of Boston’s stormwater—buried under Doyle’s.
As a result, BWSC “required” his team to install a system of micropiles and structural slabs to keep the additional load off the buried public infrastructure, Goodman said.
That, Goodman said, required removing large chunks of the existing building to fit the facility within the building’s footprint. “The remaining structure became unsafe to work with,” Goodman said, “and we were forced to remove the two remaining walls and rebuild the wall and floor assembly.”
But John Sullivan, chief engineer at BWSC, said: “We never dictate how something should be built” when we ban a developer add additional structural load to the city’s water and sewer infrastructure. Sullivan received bind to degree beam in existing walls are saved “for historical purposes” would have been “prohibitively expensive”.
When I informed Goodman that Sullivan said BWSC does not require specific construction methods, Goodman responded: “There’s no other way to transfer that amount of load 40 feet into the ground than piles with a grade beam on top of the piles.”
Goodman also notes: “Historically significant pieces” were “removed and documented” and “are being stored for reinstallation.”
The project includes a four-storey residential building.
Photo by Joy Silverstein for ENR
Fraunholtz, who has lived in Jamaica Plain for 24 years, says neighbors were blindsided when the entire building was torn down because they were told two-thirds of Doyle’s building would remain.
Fraunholtz said he “understands” that things happen during construction when you start “excavating things,” but “I guess I thought someone who was going to tackle an old building would have a more realistic idea of what might be found.”
Charged letter
I looked back at some of the history of the project.
A letter dated November 11, 2022 from the project’s structural engineering firm, ST&P, based in Waltham, Mass., to the project’s Boston-based design firm. staircase architecture, includes schematic drawings for a grade beam and micropiles that prevent loads from settling directly on the Stoney Brook conduit.
“All proposed walls and framing above the conduit will be supported by full height partially concrete steel truss along Williams Street and fully concrete encased wide steel beams along Washington Street and the rear of the building,” the letter states. “The truss and beams will be designed to support the formwork and the weight of the concrete enclosures, without imposing new loads on the duct.”
The letter continues: “Once the concrete reaches its design strength, the rebar and beams and their concrete facings will act as composite members to support the building loads on the existing water conduit without imposing any new loads on it.”
The only reference in the letter or its attached schematic drawings to the existing walls is that the loads are absorbed by “a 6-inch compressible fill placed between the bottoms of the concrete decks and the top of the existing foundation walls which will be reduced in height to accommodate the new work.”
Scales Architecture, features the project on the front of its website, but could not be reached for comment. ST&P declined to comment.
Schematic drawings of a beam and micropiles that prevent structural loads from sitting directly on the Stoney Brook Conduit. Image: Courtesy of Boston Water and Sewer Commission.
Sullivan received BWSC only reviews water, sewer and drain plans, and asks engineers to show how any foundation conflicts with BWSC infrastructure will be mitigated to maintain future access. He said this while the BWSC approved the site plan for the project team on August 10, 2023, Often, project teams decide to build things differently from how they are designed once construction begins and feel that adjustments need to be made.
“Things change in the field, contractors have all kinds of good ideas,” he said. “The contractor may have said, ‘Look, it’ll be easier if I do this, it won’t cost you as much,’ or ‘We have to do something different because my walls are going to fall down.'”
The site of the former Doyle’s Pub in Boston’s Jamaica Plain neighborhood after it was demolished on December 2.
Photo by Joy Silverstein for ENR
According to the Boston Preservation Alliance, Doyle’s opened its doors in 1882 and “hosted everything from community gatherings and birthday parties to a convocation of political figures including U.S. Senator John F. Kerry, Ted Kennedy, Boston Mayors Ray Flynn, Kevin White, Tom Menino and many others.”
It took Watermark Development several years to put the site together. In 2022, he bought a semi-detached house on Washington Street, next to Doyle’s and a place on Williams Street. for $5.5 millionaccording to the Boston Business Journal.
The framing for the new walls and floor was installed shortly after the old walls were torn down on December 2nd.Photo by Joy Silverstein for ENR The three-building development being finalized will include 29 residential units, including four affordable ones. meIn addition to a new restaurant, the proposal called for a grocery market of more than 4,000 square meters.
Goodman, who declined to say whether the project is on budget, originally hoped to complete the effort this summer, but now plans to finish in the fall of 2026.
I understand that if saving the existing facade would be a huge expense for the developer, it probably wouldn’t make sense.
So, based on the renderings, I think the final facade will pay homage to the original —I look forward to seeing it.
