The leg­endary New York Times archi­tec­ture crit­ic was not mak­ing a procla­ma­tion from on high. Rather, hers was one voice in a cho­rus of sup­port­ers. In an episode of the local tele­vi­sion pro­gram Michael Ambrosino’s Show, its host enthused, ​“Boston gam­bled, and they won.” While the intri­cate arrange­ment of brick and con­crete was greet­ed by con­fu­sion as well as praise — atten­dees of the design’s 1962 unveil­ing say that May­or John Collins was star­tled by the scheme, for instance — the large­ly pos­i­tive recep­tion amount­ed to mul­ti­ple awards and a bur­geon­ing of Bru­tal­ist-style gov­ern­ment build­ings worldwide.

Boston City Hall’s sur­round­ing plaza didn’t fare with pub­lic opin­ion near­ly as well. The out­door space, a tapes­try of brick cov­er­ing 8 acres, formed the heart of I.M. Pei & Asso­ciates’ Gov­ern­ment Cen­ter Urban Renew­al Plan, which pro­posed 30 pub­lic build­ings in the for­mer Scol­lay Square neigh­bor­hood. Inspired by the Piaz­za del Cam­po in Siena, Italy, Pei deter­mined the plaza’s fan-shaped plan as well as its slopes and ter­races over a 25-foot grade change, while City Hall archi­tects Kall­mann McK­in­nell & Knowles are cred­it­ed with the final design. Because it was not ful­ly com­plete when The New York Times pub­lished her review, crit­ic Huxtable with­held a detailed com­men­tary about the plaza. Yet a famous rebut­tal to that essay, writ­ten by Ellen Per­ry Berke­ley, doc­u­ment­ed what most peo­ple felt about the city’s back­yard from its incep­tion: the terms ​“wast­ed space” and ​“red tun­dra” would haunt Boston City Hall Plaza for almost five decades thereafter.

In 2015, city offi­cials decid­ed to turn its urban desert into a des­ti­na­tion, com­mis­sion­ing a new direc­tion for the plaza as part of a mas­ter plan by Reed Hilder­brand and Utile. And in 2020, a team of land­scape and urban design experts from the glob­al design stu­dio Sasa­ki began ren­o­vat­ing the plaza accord­ing to the mas­ter plan’s vision of a sus­tain­able, acces­si­ble pub­lic space. Crews put the fin­ish­ing touch­es on that effort this past summer.

The orig­i­nal plaza was expan­sive and unscript­ed for a philo­soph­i­cal rea­son. Democ­ra­cy, both I.M. Pei and Kall­mann McK­in­nell & Knowles rea­soned, meant allow­ing peo­ple to use and move through the phys­i­cal envi­ron­ment as they saw fit. The rein­vent­ed plaza is full of pro­gram­ming, includ­ing a new Civic Pavil­ion and a 12,000-square-foot play­ground, yet still very much demo­c­ra­t­ic: these and oth­er ameni­ties were con­ceived in response to exten­sive feed­back gath­ered from Bosto­ni­ans. The par­tic­i­pants also report­ed a desire for a park-like atmos­phere, to which Sasa­ki respond­ed with 250 new trees, 27,000 square feet of gar­den beds filled with native plants, and a Foun­tain Ter­race whose water­fall con­fig­u­ra­tion evokes an ancient spring that once flowed on site. Res­i­dents who expe­ri­ence lim­it­ed mobil­i­ty are equal­ly wel­come to the inter­ven­tions, thanks to the plaza’s new ADA-com­pli­ant Hanover Walk prom­e­nade, inclu­sion of acces­si­ble com­pan­ion perch­es among the project’s 3,000 new seats, and gen­tle angles through­out the site.

In a tes­ta­ment to the scale of the orig­i­nal open plaza, today there is still plen­ty of room to spare. As many as 25,000 peo­ple can flock to their chief munic­i­pal build­ing to cel­e­brate the next New Eng­land Patri­ots tri­umph or take part in a city-spon­sored boogie-down.

Huxtable prob­a­bly was not imag­in­ing cli­mate change when she implored her read­ers to con­sid­er Boston City Hall’s per­sist­ing beyond ​“the last hur­rah.” Yet threats of extreme weath­er and urban flood­ing were too pal­pa­ble to ignore for the plaza’s sec­ond chance. The plant­i­ngs select­ed for the project large­ly tol­er­ate dry spells as well as down­pours, and fos­ter pol­li­na­tor com­mu­ni­ties. The project’s invest­ment in envi­ron­men­tal resilience is even more pal­pa­ble under­ground, where stormwa­ter is col­lect­ed in a 10,000-gallon tank for reuse as irri­ga­tion. Sasa­ki worked close­ly with its con­struc­tion man­ag­er on the sub­ter­ranean sys­tem, giv­en that Boston’s his­tor­i­cal sub­way tun­nels come with­in a foot of the plaza’s brick pavers in places. The firms rein­forced those struc­tures while weav­ing stormwa­ter drainage around them.

The reopen­ing of Boston City Hall Plaza has turned the rep­u­ta­tion­al tables. All stripes of observers adopt­ed the trans­formed pub­lic space as a win­ning gam­ble, where­as the Bru­tal­ist icon that made it pos­si­ble stirs mixed feel­ings on the best of days. But there may be a longer-term coat­tail effect, a project con­sul­tant told Land­scape Archi­tec­ture mag­a­zine last year. In speak­ing with scores of Bosto­ni­ans, design­er Mark Pas­nik recalled, ​“the [most com­mon] response we get is, ​‘I hate the build­ing,’ and then we’d talk to them more, and they say, ​‘Well, it’s real­ly the plaza that’s the prob­lem.’” Sasaki’s mul­ti­ple site improve­ments could very well ​“improve per­cep­tion, and peo­ple see the build­ing in a con­text where the framing…is more close-in and more inten­tion­al.” In which case, may the hur­rahs nev­er cease.