Boston South Station building redevelopment photos, Massachusetts rail hub refurb, MA tower images

Boston South Station Building Renewal News

September 25, 2025

Design: Pelli Clarke & Partners, Architects

Location: 700 Atlantic Avenue, Boston, MA 02110, Massachusetts, USA

Boston South Station Building Redevelopment, Massachusetts

Photos by Jason O’Rear, Pelli Clarke & Partners

Civic Leaders Unveil a Comprehensive Transformation of Boston South Station, Marking a Historic Step Forward for the Busiest Transit Hub in New England.

Designed by Pelli Clarke & Partners, the revitalized transit hub transforms the passenger experience, ensuring longevity with a new concourse, an expanded bus station with interconnected transfers, enhanced transportation offerings, and the addition of a 51-story office and residential tower.

Boston, MA – September 25, 2025 – Today, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu unveils the reimagined Boston South Station, developed by Hines in partnership with Amtrak, MBTA, Boston Planning & Development Agency, MassDOT and designed by global architecture practice Pelli Clarke & Partners.

The first major upgrade to the 126-year-old station since the 1980s, the 30-year Boston South Station redevelopment project, led by Pelli Clarke & Partners, holistically and thoughtfully reimagines and modernizes the city’s most critical piece of transport infrastructure. Realized through a public-private partnership, the project addresses key challenges the station has experienced in recent decades due to increased ridership, overcrowding and poor connectivity within the terminal. The redevelopment results in a 50% increased capacity for the bus terminal and significantly improved circulation for all users, enabling smoother transfers between Amtrak, MBTA commuter rail, subway, and both local and intercity bus services.

“The completion of Boston South Station marks a radical transformation of the passenger experience, ensuring longevity through enhanced transit connectivity and reimagined public spaces,” said Fred Clarke, Co-founder and Partner Emeritus, Pelli Clarke & Partners. “We sought to honor the station’s heritage while reestablishing it as a civic centerpiece through progressive design and sustainable construction. This redevelopment positions South Station as both a vital urban landmark and a symbol of Boston’s capacity to adapt, evolve, and lead.”

The reimagined station preserves the building’s historic architecture while equipping it to meet future ridership and civic needs. The project encompasses a transformed public concourse, a new 51-story mixed-use office and residential tower, and new direct routes to the upgraded bus station and continued connection to local MBTA Subway and BRT lines such as the Red Line and the Silver Line. Changes to the station enhance the experience for millions of yearly travelers, with over 128,000 boardings every weekday, on trains, subway cars and buses, aligning facilities with its position as one of the nation’s busiest transportation hubs.

“The expanded concourse is designed to give Boston the arrival experience a city of its stature deserves—welcoming, expansive, and connected to both its past and future,” said Graham Banks, Partner at Pelli Clarke & Partners. “The new tower reshapes the skyline while thoughtfully complementing the surrounding urban fabric and remaining respectfully attuned to the historic headhouse it rises above.”

The project transforms the station into a more pedestrian-friendly, mixed-use hub that prioritizes a seamless multi-model travel experience. For the first time, South Station’s rail and bus terminals are seamlessly integrated, vastly improving circulation, efficiency, and commuter experience.

Originally opened in 1899, the Beaux-Arts South Station, designed by architects Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge, has long been an icon of civic architecture in the city. The 2025 redevelopment breathes new life into the station’s outdoor concourse spaces, creating more efficient and direct connections to the integrated and transformed bus station. The newly completed spaces prioritize significant enhancements to passenger experience, and expanded, bright, and safe public spaces with seamless multi-modal transit connectivity. The existing 1980s-renovated main concourse remained untouched, enabling work to be focused on areas of greatest need across the station campus.

A new south entrance concourse, known as The Great Space, features ten soaring concrete arches supporting three dramatic domes that rise six stories high, forming both a monumental gateway and the structural base for the new tower above. Expansive and light-filled, the concourse combines functionality with beauty—offering a weather-protected environment for travelers, improving circulation, and adding a striking sense of verticality to what was once a dim, congested, enclosed space to a soaring civic space.

Rising above the historic station and concourse, a 51-story tower designed by Pelli Clarke & Partners emerges as a bold new landmark in Boston’s skyline. Sculpted to complement the massing and scale of the historic headhouse, the tower blends technical precision with a faceted glass form, establishing a visual dialogue between the station’s historic architecture with a bold, contemporary vision for the city’s future. The tower offers 680,000 square feet of premium office space, 166 luxury Ritz-Carlton residences, dining, retail, and elevated park amenities. Floor-to-ceiling windows in office and residential units provide panoramic views of the city and its harbor.

At the tower’s base, a multi-level podium, accessed through a dedicated entrance adjacent to the transit center, houses dedicated shuttle lobbies, retail spaces, and restaurants. Above, a one-acre rooftop park features a landscaped terrace, gardens, and various amenities for residents and office tenants.

South Station is pre-certified LEED Gold, designed to achieve the first BREEAM ‘Excellent’ rating in the U.S., and recognized with a GRESB Green Star.

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Pelli Clarke & Partners

Pelli Clarke & Partners designs buildings and spaces that inspire and transform communities worldwide. Based in New Haven and New York City, partners lead interdisciplinary teams of architects, designers, and technical experts across the globe.

The firm’s portfolio of work includes iconic buildings such as the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood, and Salesforce Transit Center in San Francisco. From its founding in 1977, Cesar Pelli instilled a culture of creativity and innovation, and the firm proudly carries this legacy forward by designing new possibilities for living, working, and learning in a changing world. To learn more, visit www.pcparch.com and follow (at)pelliclarkeandpartners on social media.

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Hines

Hines is a leading global real estate investment manager. We own and operate $91.8 billion1 of assets across property types and on behalf of a diverse group of institutional and private wealth clients.

Every day, our 4,600 employees in 30 countries draw on our 68-year history to build the world forward by investing in, developing, and managing some of the world’s best real estate. To learn more, visit www.hines.com and follow (at)Hines on social media.

¹Includes both the global Hines organization and RIA AUM as of June 30, 2025.