Arresting Development

When Charles Hotel managing director Richard Friedman undertook reinventing the 1851 Charles Street Jail, he knew he was in for a challenge. “I’m a glutton for tough projects,” he says. “At the end of the day, you really have something special—but you never know how difficult it will be.” Because the building is a National Historic Landmark, for instance, he would need two architecture firms: Cambridge Seven Associates for the hotel, and Boston’s Ann Beha Architects to consult on the historical renovation. Seven years, $110 million, and three postponed openings later, the 298-room Liberty Hotel is finally up and running.

1. Cambridge Seven architect Gary Johnson, who first worked with Friedman on the Charles Hotel, recognized it would have been aesthetically ill-advised (and impossibly expensive) to try to re-create the jail’s granite architecture in the adjacent hotel building, an ultramodern 16-story tower. He chose brick and glass instead, yielding a building that bridges the gap between the institutional architecture of the nearby hospital area and the brick townhouses of Beacon Hill.

2. Like many of Boston’s buildings, the Liberty essentially floats on marshland. In this case, support comes from 50-foot-long logs sunk every 5 feet in the clay and capped with stacks of granite blocks. When the developers disassembled one wing of the jail to make room for the new hotel tower, they salvaged what they could, and that granite is now making its way into other projects around New England.

3. Most of the walls at the jail, which was originally designed by architect Gridley J. F. Bryant (known for his work on old City Hall), are brick core, about 2 feet wide, clad in 6-inch-thick granite panels. Workers spent three weeks sandblasting some 20 coats of paint from the interior brick, and another month scrubbing the exterior by hand.