Spanning the Massachusetts Turnpike and combining new construction with the renovation of existing service areas, the Hynes was designed to attract the growing national and international convention market. Its location in the historic Back Bay neighborhood of Boston offers convenience to Boston’s largest hotels and finest restaurants, a feature rarely found in other current convention centers.

The facility can accommodate large conventions or several smaller events. It contains a variety of spaces for exhibition purposes: generous pre-function gathering areas; 193,000 square feet of exhibition space; 71,000 square feet of meeting rooms; an auditorium for 5,000 people; a 25,000 square foot multi-purpose auditorium and ballroom; a public cafeteria; a lounge; and the requisite support facilities with separate service and visitors’ circulation.

The urbanistic intention of the design is to continue the tradition of integrating an important monumental building into the fabric of the Back Bay exemplified by Richardson’s Trinity Church, and McKim Mead and White’s Public Library, all located on Boylston Street. The concept for this unusually long building is that of a stoa-like frontispiece containing break-out and circulation spaces for the largely closed volumes for exhibition, thus connecting the life of the building with that of the city street. The nobly scaled, stone clad facade, with its arcade and metal and glass attic stretching over 500 feet, is organized in a tripartite composition of arcade, piano nobile, and gabled attic that adds cohesiveness and architectural presence to the western end of this important thoroughfare. At the interior, the exhibition and convention spaces are structured and anchored by a monumental entrance drum containing escalators, and features a smaller rotunda, a linear atrium, a triple space vaulted ballroom, and glazed promenades with a double height loggia along Boylston Street.

The frontal arcaded volume is clad in granite whereas the rest of the building is faced in roman brick. A grid of rough hewn granite is inscribed on all facades.

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