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Boston Redevelopment Authority photographs, Collection # 4010.001, City of Boston Archives, Boston
What: Opening of the Prudential Center
When: April 19, 1965
Where: Boylston Street, Boston
- Prudential Insurance Co. executives and VIPs including former presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson II commemorated the completion of the 52-story, 1.2 million-square-foot Prudential Tower.
- Prudential had announced plans for a new headquarters in 1957 that would anchor a major development on the site of the the former Boston and Albany rail yard in Back Bay.
- The development raised hopes of an economic rebirth for Boston amid the flight of residents, jobs and retailers to suburbia. The project also included construction of War Memorial Auditorium, later renamed the John B. Hynes Convention Center, and the 1,220-room Sheraton Boston Hotel.
“When I graduated from high school at age 17… I went to work at the Prudential. I was there a year when they were building a new Prudential Tower and they asked a group of us if we would go to New Jersey, their home office, and learn to work with the new computers because they were putting the mainframes at the Prudential.”
— 2018 interview with Maureen Reen, then age 72, “We Are Boston: Stories of Hope, Struggle & Resilience” an oral history project led by Daniel Johnson, city of Boston Artist-in-Residence
