The Hotel Veritas
The Hotel Veritas at 1313 Massachusetts Avenue opened in June 2010. It replaced a 19th century apartment house and incorporated an auto repair shop, formerly a carriage house and stable, around the corner on Remington Street.
Architect Mark Boyes-Watson’s original drawings showed a restored façade on Massachusetts Avenue with a modern glass-and-wood four-story addition on Remington Street. Discussions with the Commission took place over several months in late 2006, with input from the Harvard Square Defense Fund and Remington Street neighbors. The neighbors thought the former repair shop, planned as an entrance to the hotel, looked too modern.
Commission chair William King urged Boyes-Watson to soften its appearance, while executive director Charles Sullivan endorsed “an intellectually-defensible design approach.”
Benson Willis, the hotel’s general manager, summed up the final design as “state-of-the-art, but very much like it was in 1880.”