B B Chemical Company building
- Architect
- Shepley Bulfinch
- Year
- 1937
- Style
- International Style
- City
- Boston, MA
- Collections
- bulfinch’s bostoncambridge campus moderns
Built in 1937 for the Boston Blacking Company — an adhesive manufacturer known for its Bostik brand — this Memorial Drive building was designed by Coolidge, Shepley, Bulfinch & Abbott as a prominent local example of Streamline Moderne industrial architecture. From 1979 to 1996 it served as the corporate headquarters of Polaroid Corporation.
the building
Massing and canopy. The building is a rectangular volume with a four-story central section flanked by three-story wings, framed in steel and concrete and faced in buff brick. The central section is recessed behind the wings, and a projecting cornice on the wings extends over that recess to form a curved canopy above the entrance.
the style
The building is a prominent local example of Streamline Moderne, a style associated with speed and modernity that the adhesive maker Boston Blacking Company adopted for its Cambridgeport headquarters and factory in 1937.
More on International Stylethe architect
Designed by the Boston firm Coolidge, Shepley, Bulfinch & Abbott — the predecessor of today's Shepley Bulfinch, one of the city's oldest continuously operating architecture practices.
significance
Added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982, though listed there under the incorrect name "B and B Chemical Company." The building later housed Polaroid Corporation's headquarters from 1979 to 1996 and is now owned by the Bulfinch Companies of Needham, Massachusetts.
nearby
- River Street Firehouse
- The Class of 1959 Chapel
- First Baptist Church
- Clifton Merriman Post Office Building
- St. Peter's Episcopal Church
- Peter Fuller Building