John Hancock Tower
The skyscraper whose 500-pound window panes used to detach and fall from any of its 60 floors onto pedestrians below.
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At 790 feet, Henry N. Cobb's 1976 tower is still New England's tallest — and one of modernism's most expensive embarrassments. Engineers found it could overturn under certain wind loads. The blue glass windows kept falling out. Construction dragged five years past schedule while costs reportedly climbed from $75 million to $175 million. Standing next to it, the story written into the glass is more interesting than the view.
What to look for
- The all-blue glass curtain wall — those signature panes each weighed 500 pounds and the design flaw let any of them detach from full height
- Trinity Church directly across the street, which was damaged when the tower's foundation excavation warped the steel retaining walls and shifted the Back Bay clay beneath it
- The address signage reading 200 Clarendon Street — the Hancock name was dropped in 2015 when the insurance company's lease expired
Located in Back Bay; the building is now officially addressed as 200 Clarendon Street, not Hancock Tower.
John Hancock Tower is one of 31 sights worth the detour in Boston, all bundled offline in Voyage GO — download the Boston pack and it sits on your map with no signal, filling your travel passport the moment you walk past.
More to see in Boston
- Museum of Fine Arts BostonFour hundred and fifty thousand works of art under one roof — one of the most comprehensive collections in the Americas.
- TD GardenThe subway stops underneath it — TD Garden is built directly above MBTA's North Station, so you step off the train and you are already at the door.
- Harvard College ObservatoryOn the night of July 16-17, 1850, astronomers here made the first daguerreotype of a star — Vega — through a telescope that was the largest in North America.
- Fenway ParkThe oldest active ballpark in MLB, where a cramped city block accidentally invented some of baseball's most famous features.
- Isabella Stewart Gardner MuseumIn 1990, thieves walked out with thirteen works worth $500 million — none have ever come back, and the case is still open.
- Boston Public LibraryJohn Adams' personal 3,800-volume library lives here — and any Massachusetts adult can walk in and access it.