TD Garden’s Champions Row keeps original Boston Garden alive with special markings
Boston Bruins’ home arena hosting not just the Stanley Cup of late, but some big-time development too
Published on Curbed—Boston
June 5, 2019
By Tom Acitelli
A major entrance for both TD Garden and North Station holds clues to the composition of the original Boston Garden, which was demolished in 1998 after 60 years. Boston-based landscape architecture firm Copley Wolff Design Group intentionally worked in markings that follow the outlines from the original Garden.
Champions Row opened in December, and is especially relevant now as the Boston Bruins head into the endgame of the Stanley Cup. The general public can see the markings, too. Some examples, per Copley Wolff:
Granite slabs show where fans would have celebrated.
A stainless-steel band represents the location of the out-of-bounds line for NBA games and the so-called key for the Boston Celtics’ home court.
A three-inch brass inlay shows the original locations of the face-off circles of the Bruins’ home rink.
And within that face-off circle is a one- to five-inch-diameter inlay marking the puck-drop for said face-offs.
One more brass inlay—this oval-shaped and six inches wide—marks where pucks might’ve struck during Bruins games.
The area around and above these markings is, of course, seeing some major development. There is the 1.5 million-square-foot Hub on Causeway itself, which has started opening and which includes a 38-story, 440-unit residential tower (and which also includes Champions Way).
Then there’s the first major renovation of TD Garden since it opened 1995. That $100 million project will add all sorts of bells and whistles to fans’ game-going experiences and expand the arena some 50,000 square feet. Renovation work is expected to last into 2020.