Architectural Significance

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The North End Bath House and Gymnasium (Nazzaro Community Center) (MACRIS Inventory No. BOS.5405) is the last public building remaining in the original North End Municipal Area on North Bennet St. (MACRIS Inventory No. BOS.ACN North End Municipal Area), whose central organizing feature was the Prince St. and N Bennet St. (Polcari) Playground. It is a well-preserved red brick and white terra cotta Renaissance Revival design, influenced also by Colonial Revival style of the other buildings in the Municipal Area. Inspired by the Villa Medici in Rome, it was designed in 1904 by Maginnis, Walsh & Sullivan. The 6,000 sq. foot, three-story building is set back and positioned for grandeur, as an Italian palazzo would be, by opening onto an open courtyard (known today as the Louis T. Polcari Playground). The projecting round-arched pavilion entrance, framed by Tuscan columns, sits on a plinth with flanking bullnose stairs, for added stature. The grand front entrance, featuring a barrel-vaulted top and decorated tympanum displaying the great Seal of Boston carved in stone, is accented on each side column by a black tablet, honoring two program leaders. The entrance arch is covered by flat-seamed, patinated copper cladding. To either side of the entrance are round-arched windows with keystones, suggesting ancient Roman style, as reinterpreted in the Renaissance. Within the arches are left- and right- diagonal accents, suggesting Colonial Revival style. The building exterior has a New England look with its field of red brick, laid in Flemish bond. Each story is accented with a belt course at the spring point of the door and window arches. In piano nobile style typical of the Renaissance, the two upper floors are combined into one dominant story, emphasized by a wider ornamental molded belt course and three ornamentally framed porthole windows.

Each façade of the building features symmetrical and repetitive design elements, honoring the Renaissance Revival style. Terra cotta pilasters, decorated with chevrons, rise from each corner of the second-story belt course to the slate hipped roof. The three giant arched windows on the North Bennet St. Side of the building, with masonry arches and horizontal transoms, are evocative of the ancient Roman baths. These two-story windows have terra cotta frames and tympanums echoing the porthole windows and entrance tympanum of the front, with keystones and finials, chevrons, seashells, sea creatures, crenellation, and other ornaments within their spandrels. These grand windows, casting transom light on the gymnasium within, are aligned with the alternating narrow and wider windows on the lower stories, which are quoined in terra cotta within the red brick field.

Inside, the showers and dressing rooms were located on the first and second floors, along with an infirmary and residence for the superintendent. Most of the second floor was designed as a two-story gymnasium, circled by a running track on the third story. Maureen Meister cites the building in Arts and Crafts Architecture: History and Heritage in New England.[i] Its largest space was an assembly hall, that was conceived as an informal town hall that would ‘help the district achieve civic unity.’[ii]

The gray slate roof, with copper step flashing from brick chimneys and copper vents, features slate saddle ridges and a continuous bracketed cornice with a classical frieze. Three arcaded chimneys, designed in the original drawings to be open, are bricked in as recessed blind arches. A pyramided skylight with copper elements offers a dramatic, crowning conclusion at the top of the building. While a $1 million renovation in 2004 updated the interior facilities for modern community usage, the building’s exterior fully retains its original, elegant design.

Architects Charles Donagh Maginnis (1867-1955), Timothy Walsh (1868-1934) and Matthew Sullivan (1868-1938) were nationally prominent for their design of Roman Catholic churches and university buildings. Maginnis emigrated from Ireland in 1885 and began working five years later in the office of Edmund Wheelwright, the Boston City Architect. Walsh was born in Cambridge, educated at English High School, and studied in the Paris ateliers. Sullivan also worked in Wheelwright’s office until in 1895 he succeeded him as Boston City Architect. Their work included such buildings as the Boston College and Emmanuel College campuses, the chapel at Trinity College, law school at the University of Notre Dame, Harkness Tower at Yale University, the chancel at Trinity Church in Boston’s Copley Square, and the high altar at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City. From 1937-1939 Maginnis was President of the American Institute of Architects, which presented him in 1848 its Gold Medal for “outstanding service to American architecture,” the highest award in the profession. The Pope also honored him for his work in ecclesiastical architecture.

The North End Bath House and Gymnasium (Nazzaro Center) was constructed with its principal entry on the Prince Street Playground’s northern street frontage. Now known as the Polcari Playground, this land was acquired by the city in 1897. It preserves the historic open space between two of the neighborhood’s principal interior thoroughfares and commercial corridors (Salem Street and Hanover Street), and serves as the entry plaza for the Bath House. The playground was established in 1897 at the southern Prince Street end, and then expanded by the Parks Department in 1999 and 1900 to North Bennet Street through additional land-takings.[iii] The playground is the principal feature around which the North End Municipal area was organized between 1897 and 1913, to improve the quality of life in one of the city’s most congested areas. By the late 19^th century, the urban playground had gained importance as a means for opening up densely settled interior blocks to increase light and ventilation for residence, in addition to providing a safe place for children so they would not have to play in the street. While the three privatized buildings retain most of their original exterior architectural features, the playground does not currently display historic finishes. Iron fencing about six feet high defines the street frontages; low iron fencing defines the property where it abuts neighboring buildings on the east and west. There is a concrete plaza with benches at the northern end, and a full basketball court occupying the southern two-thirds of the parcel. Shade trees and benches dot the edges of the playground and basketball court.

[i] Maureen Meister, Arts and Crafts Architecture: History and Heritage in New England (Hanover and London: University Press of New England, 2014.)

[ii] Fiske, Kimball, “The Society Center. Part II. Philanthropic Enterprises,” Architectural Record, vol. 45, no. 6 (June, 1919) pp. 531-33, as quoted in Meister.

[iii] City Planning Board, City of Boston, The North End. A Survey and Comprehensive Plan. Boston: City Printing Department, 1919. 76-77