Millennium Place is a 256-unit residential building located in downtown Boston across from the Ritz-Carlton. The 15-story tower includes one-, two-, and three-bedroom units as well as 9,700 sq. ft. of ground floor retail. Also included is a 125-car underground parking garage.
Shaped like a truncated triangle, the long-undeveloped lot is situated along a pronounced and important bend in Boston’s historic commercial spine of Washington Street. Using a motif of wedge-shaped bay windows arranged in a radial pattern on the curve, the building is conceived as an L-shaped masonry block of roman-brick punctuated by a series of metal latticed window bays. Each corner of the block was articulated to define a threshold at the intersections. The corner at Hayward Place, with a formal entry door on axis with the opposite street, is more tower-like and capped by a metal sunscreen. The beige brick echoes the late 19th century loft buildings abutting the site to the east.
Unusual for a dense downtown site, an open landscaped courtyard defines the inside of the "L" with a porte-cochere for vehicle drop off. The garden is like a “green theater”, layered with diverse planting and designed for all seasons to screen the street beyond from the main lounge that overlooks and wraps around three sides of the garden. The unique proportions of the site yielded a plan of mostly double-loaded apartment corridors, with two elevator cores, one in the tower and one at the inside corner of the “L”. Each corridor overlooks the garden and draws in south daylight. The roof is articulated with a series of smaller stair access pavilions, creating a variety of unique terrace spaces around the perimeter of the block.
