CLIENT
Federal Development, Inc
Boston, MA

PROJECT
The Landmark -
Its History and Restoration

AUDIENCE
Real Estate clients & prospects

PURPOSE
To commemorate the restoration effort and inform clients and prospects of the quality of their real estate development work

THE HISTORY AND RESTORATION OF A BOSTON ART DECO LANDMARK

The Landmark is a handsome, 24-story Art Deco building in Boston’s financial district. When it was built in 1930, it was known as the United Shoe Machinery Building and was considered Boston’s first skyscraper.

Its exterior and lobby was recently restored to its former grandeur. The rest of the building was renovated and sold as office condominium space. When this book was initiated by the client, the building was already 90% sold so it did not need to function as an overt sales tool. Instead, the client wanted to pat themselves on the back for a job well done and show future clients and prospects the high-quality of their efforts in real estate.

The only direction from the client was the desire for a coffee-table book that discussed the building’s history and restoration. We decided the book should be taller than normal and oversized (since it’s a book about a skyscraper.) The goal was to create a clean, structured layout that conveyed understated elegance, class and style. We decided to make it a highly visual book with the written content limited to the text in a single column on the left-hand page and various captions for the photos.

The images did most of the talking. It was quite a treasure hunt finding many of the old historical photos, articles, and blueprints. We also hired a photographer to climb on the surrounding rooftops and take some beautiful photos of the Landmark as well as some close-ups of its lovely ornamentation.