Boston, Massachusetts, USA
DevelopersSamuels & Associates challengedElkus Manfredi Architects to reinvent common areas of the 1M-square-foot Sears Roebuck & Co. warehouse and distribution center that was a retail powerhouse until Sears abandoned the building in 1988.
The project has been awarded a 2021 American Architecture Award and an honorable mention at the 2022 International Architecture Awards from The Chicago Athenaeum and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.
In the late 2010s, with its big-box stores and dining mix unresponsive to its changing environs, office spaces underused, and architecture obscured by 20th-century renovations, Samuels & Associates knew the official Boston Landmark would benefit from repositioning.
Elkus Manfredi Architects envisioned a mixed-use hub linking Boston’s Fenway and Longwood Medical neighborhoods, the first part of this phased project needed to forge ground-level
connections between the community and a diverse retail/restaurant program.
Breathing new life into the old space was not only more sustainable than building new, it honors the rich history of this neighborhood cornerstone.
The reinvented building—now called 401 Park—repurposes underutilized spaces for today’s high-energy work/play world.
What the architects did was to strip interiors to their structural bones, revealing the building’s true industrial character.
They celebrated architectural elements, such as the soaring concrete columns, to recall the original building and create a sense of scale.
Custom designing a railing with Boston-centric names/places to honor the city’s rich history within the historical context.
They created a space for the 25,000-square-foot Time Out Market food hall, featuring massive windows that open to the outdoors and activated two interior atria as daylit office amenity areas.
The former parking lot was converted into a public park introducing public art, sculpture, and vintage objets d’art inside and out— including household artifacts once available in the Sears catalog.
Today, 401 Park is once again a cornerstone of the booming neighborhood, paying homage to Fenway’s legacy while serving as a dynamic day/night destination for visitors, workers, and residents.
Project: 401 Park Repositioning
Architects: Elkus Manfredi Architects
Lead Architect: David P. Manfredo
Client: Samuels & Associates
Contractor: Suffolk
Landscape Architect: LeBlanc Jones
Photographers: Robert Benson