Grundmann_Studios
Grundmann Studios
Former artist studio building in Boston, Massachusetts
Grundmann Studios (1893–1917) in Boston, Massachusetts, was a building on Clarendon Street in the Back Bay. It contained artist's workspaces and multipurpose function rooms Copley Hall and Allston Hall. Prior to 1893, it functioned as a skating rink;[note 1] after the Boston Art Students' Association leased the building it was renamed in honor of local art educator Emil Otto Grundmann.[2] The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, whose campus was adjacent, owned the property.[3] Tenants included the Copley Society (formerly Boston Art Students' Association); artists Henry R. Blaney,[4] Herman Dudley Murphy,[5] Frank Richmond,[6] Mary Bradish Titcomb;[7] sculptor John A. Wilson, architect Josephine Wright Chapman; and the College Club.[8][9]
Ralph Adams Cram, architect and member of BASA, was charged with remodeling the interior. The first floor included club rooms—library, parlor, smoking room and life class room—and two large halls, each lit with "an immense skylight or glass roof". The larger room, Copley Hall, could seat up to eight hundred people and was used for lectures, concerts, dancing parties and art exhibitions. The smaller Allston Hall was designed for use as a picture gallery or supper room. It was connected by dumbwaiter to the basement kitchen. The second floor contained thirty-four suites of one, two, or three rooms, described as "so delightfully picturesque, with little, overhanging galleries, which are reached by the tiniest flight of stairs, it seems like climbing into a doll's house."[10]
The building was demolished in 1917 to allow for the extension of Stuart street, part of the "broad highway" civic improvement project.[11][12]
