There's a massive model of Boston inside City Hall. Here's how you can see it for free.
There's a room in Boston City Hall where you can see the entire city all at once.
The planning department's model room is a large, open space that houses a 1:40 inch scale, three-dimensional replica of downtown Boston and several surrounding neighborhoods.
Boston City Hall's model room
"Every time a person walks in here, I know what the first sound coming out of their mouth will be. It'll be 'wow.' It's universal, regardless of which country they come from, that word is 'wow,'" said Prataap Patrose of the Boston Planning Department.
Patrose has been with the department for about 40 years and his office is across the hall from the room. Over the years, the model has featured every building, road and contour of the city and it's grown and changed along with the real thing.
"When I got to Boston in 1980, this was sitting where the Greenway is sitting today and it was like a literal wall between downtown and the waterfront," said Patrose, as he held a model of the Central Artery that was removed after the Big Dig.
The model serves an important purpose for city planners.
"A planning tool"
"We use it as a planning tool to understand how might different interventions, like a new building being proposed or a new area of the city being developed, how might that visually be and physically be manifested," said Patrose.
Patrose used a section of Dorchester Avenue as an example. He removed a triangular area full of warehouses and replaced it with a sectional model that has new streets, residential towers and open green spaces.
The basswood buildings are made in house.
"It took five people to get the base model built over roughly a 10-to-15 year period and since then we've been adding pieces to it as the city has been evolving," Patrose said.
The model room is free and open to the public from 9 a.m. through 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. To schedule a tour, contact Colleen Woods at colleen.woods@boston.gov.
