Hancock Tower, 200 Clarendon

The falling windows were the problem Boston could see.

Collection: Boston: More Stories · USA · Open in OpenStreetMap

Clouds reflected in the tower’s glass · Daderot, CC0, Wikimedia Commons

Listen to this place’s story in Peplos.

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How the story begins

During the years this tower was shedding its windows, lookouts with binoculars stood in Copley Square, paid four dollars and five cents an hour to watch for falling glass. It began on a winter night in 1973, before the building was even finished, when winds of seventy-five miles an hour widened tiny cracks in the upper panes. Each panel weighed about five hundred pounds. Over two years sixty-five came down, and no one was hurt.

The rest is in the app. Peplos plays the full story when you reach the place. You can also listen ahead of time.