Government Service Center (Boston)

The Government Service Center is an unfinished, brutalist structure by architect Paul Rudolph. It is one of the major buildings in the Government Center complex in downtown Boston, Massachusetts, at Cambridge, Staniford, and New Chardon Streets.

The building is not consistently known by a single name. Older sources variously call it the Government Service Center (though this name is easily confused with Government Center as a whole), the State Services Center, or the State Health, Welfare and Education Service Center. Many sources, especially contemporary sources, incorrectly use the Hurley or Lindemann names to refer to the whole.

In 1962, when the building was still being designed, an act was passed designating the Health, Welfare and Education Service Center as the "Joseph A. Langone, Jr., Memorial Center" and calling for the commission to "erect at a suitable location in said center, a marker, tablet, or other inscription bearing said designation." Joseph A. Langone, Jr., was a Massachusetts state senator in the 1930s.

The building comprises two connected parts, the Charles F. Hurley Building and the Erich Lindemann Mental Health Center. The Hurley section houses the Division of Unemployment Assistance and other offices of state government.

The structure includes a two-level parking garage which is largely hidden from view beneath the courtyard.

The building occupies most of a large superblock created when Boston's old West End was destroyed in the name of urban renewal. The area was formerly crisscrossed by narrow streets.

Rudolph was the coordinating architect on the project and was assisted by M.A. Dyer, Desmond & Lord, and Shepley, Bulfinch, Richardson & Abbott. The structure was designed in contrast to the City Hall a few blocks away and inspired by the idea of an amphitheatre that would allow citizens to experience civic dramas unfold. Rudolph viewed the grandiose and monumental quality of the structure as appropriate to the aims of the Great Society.

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