Boston’s Charles Street Jail is being redeveloped into the Liberty Hotel. This artist’s rendering depicts how the project will look upon its completion.
Phrases like “the Boston Strangler slept here” won’t appear in the glossy brochures for the city’s newest 4-star hotel at the Hub’s former Charles Street Jail. But the descriptions might mention “captivating” river views and how it’s the perfect weekend “escape.”
Renamed the Liberty Hotel, the restored 1851 jailhouse near Leverett Circle will open next summer offering 300 luxury rooms starting at $250 per night. The jail was home to several notorious criminals. Albert DeSalvo, the alleged serial killer who terrorized Beacon Hill as the Strangler in the 1960s, was a guest, and so were Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, who served time before their execution for killing two people at a Braintree shoe factory in 1920.
Massachusetts General Hospital bought the granite landmark and its 2.9-acre site for $16 million from the state in 1991. The sale came nearly 20 years after U.S. District Judge W. Arthur Garrity Jr. ordered the jail closed after a suit was filed by inmates complaining of unfit conditions.
The conversion from big house to lavish suites commenced in 2001 when MGH selected Cambridge-based developer Richard Friedman and his firm, Carpenter & Co., to build the hotel. The parties agreed to a 75-year land lease but neither would reveal how much money the hospital will receive in the deal.
The terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, dampened the tourist industry across the nation, but Boston was hit especially hard as hotel room occupancies plummeted to historic lows. As a result, hotel projects in the pipeline were put on hold.
But the Hub has rebounded and the annual occupancy rate has increased in four out of the last five years, according to Smith Travel Research, a Tennessee-based company that tracks data on 24,500 hotels representing more than 2.9 million rooms.
“The Liberty’s opening comes on the heels of the worst downturn in the history of Boston hotels,” said Rick Swig, president of RSBA & Assoc., a San Francisco-based hospitality consultant. “The industry suffered after 9/11 but Boston and San Francisco got hammered the worst because the high-tech and dot-com failures hit both coasts like the perfect storm. Overnight stays diminished by as much as 45 percent and overall revenues dropped between 35 [percent]and 45 percent.”
Still, Swig said, Boston has begun to recover in the last 14 months. Downtown Boston’s occupancy rate reached 74.4 percent from January through May, up from 69.6 percent for the same period a year ago.
HVS International, a New York-based global consulting service that specializes in hotels, expects Boston’s occupancy rate to reach nearly 80 percent by the end of the year, up from 74.3 percent at the close of 2005. Boston’s high point came in 2000 when hotels experienced a 79 percent occupancy rate.
“While Boston’s suburban market has not come back yet, the occupancy rates and average daily rates in the downtown continue to gain strength,” said Thomas Dolan, co-author of the “2006 Boston Hotel Market Review” and an HVS International vice president. “The gains are especially strong in the luxury market where supply is limited.”
At the same time occupancy is rising in Boston, average prices also are climbing. Downtown Boston’s average rate is nearly $200 this year, up from $178 at the end of 2005 – a 12 percent hike.
‘Off-Shore Interest’
John A. Fox, senior vice president at PKF Consulting, a San Francisco-based hospitality services company with offices nationwide, said Boston is poised to return to near-record occupancy rates.
“Boston has recovered nicely and that’s the bottom line,” Fox said. “There’s lots of interest in the city and that bullishness is evidenced by the recent announcement by the Taj Group of Hotels, which has started negotiations to purchase the Ritz-Carlton. That’s an indicator of off-shore interest.”
Indian Hotel Company Ltd. of the Tata Group, which operates the Taj Group of Hotels, is in discussions with Millennium Partners for the acquisition of the 275-room Ritz-Carlton in Boston. Experts say the storied hotel could fetch as much as $90 million.
In addition, Boston has a handful of recently completed hotel projects and some in the pipeline, a sign that developers are convinced the Boston market has room for growth. Last summer, the Westin Boston Waterfront opened it doors. The hotel and its 793 smoke-free rooms are connected by a glass-enclosed walkway to the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center.
Construction is under way at the Mandarin Oriental on Boylston Street in front of the Prudential Center where room rates could exceed $700 a night. In December, the Renaissance Boston Waterfront Hotel in South Boston is expected to open with 471 rooms at D and Congress Streets. Later this year, the InterContinental Boston will open at Fort Point Channel. The $330 million hotel will have 424 rooms and 130 condominiums.
Still, Fox is cautious. “Boston is not going to be at 90 percent occupancy like New York City and it won’t match New York’s average rate of $300,” he said. “But Boston could reach 85 percent occupancy and downtown rates could reach $200.”
Friedman, president and chief executive officer of Carpenter & Co., the Liberty Hotel’s developer, said the hotel project could not have been done without up to $15 million in state and federal historic tax credits.
“The economics of rehabilitating a National Historic Landmark and the costs of renovating such a building are enormous,” he said. “There were challenging structural problems because the cell blocks held up the building. Unlike the transformation of Boston’s Old City Hall, an office building that was staying an office building, we were creating a completely different use.”
The Liberty Hotel, upon its completion, also will include three restaurants and bars, a 6,000-square-foot meeting space located within the original historic structure and an adjacent, newly constructed 16-story wing. Among the dramatic features being preserved are historic catwalks linking public spaces; some jail cells have been retained and will be used so patrons can sit in the cells while they sip a cocktail.
But at least some remnants of the past are gone. “We removed the toilets from the jail cells,” noted Friedman.
Plans for construction of the original Charles Street Jail began in 1843 when former Boston Mayor Martin Brimmer proposed a new prison to replace the communal Leverett Street Jail built in 1822. Over the next five years, debate ensued over its location and funding for the new jail.
In 1848, architect Gridley Bryant, best known for his use of granite, and penologist Louis Dwight recommended the site that faced the Charles River Basin. Completed three years later, the jail was of national architectural significance as the prime institutional example of the “Boston Granite Style” popularized in the mid-19th century. Following the jail’s closure in 1990, prisoners were moved to the new Suffolk County Jail a few blocks away on Nashua Street.
Conversions of jails, while not commonplace, have taken place elsewhere. In 2004, the former Norfolk County Jail in Dedham was converted into the $10 million Stoneleigh Condominiums.
The building was purchased for $1 million from the state by Diamond & Co., which integrated some of the original details into the units. For example, fireplaces in the sheriff’s quarters, recessed oak doors, arched Gothic Revival windows and a portion of the 12-foot brick wall that surrounded the property were spared.
The penthouse unit, which was listed at $884,500, has a grisly reminder of the jail’s past. In a crawl space off the upstairs bedroom are the building’s original beams, from which at least three inmates were hanged.
