A senior dwelling mission close to Boston breathed new life right into a former faculty campus, remodeling it right into a vacation spot for growing old and dwelling effectively.
The Newbury of Brookline – owned by associates of Welltower (NYSE: WELL) and Kisco Senior Dwelling – spans 159 items for unbiased dwelling, assisted dwelling and reminiscence care residents. Its location on the summit of Fisher Hill offers views of downtown Boston, and the group’s design is rooted in New England structure and heritage.
Welltower initially purchased the positioning in Brookline, Massachusetts, in September, 2019, with the aim of constructing it right into a senior dwelling vacation spot. The completed mission achieves that aim and extra.
For these and different causes, The Newbury of Brookline took the highest spot within the 2025 Senior Housing Information Structure and Design Awards “Greatest Impartial Dwelling” class.
The design
The Fisher Hill space ranks as one of many largest and best-preserved Frederick Regulation Olmsted-designed suburban communities within the nation, that includes winding roads, built-in pure options and enormous lot sizes, in response to the Brookline Historic Society.
The trouble to construct a group on the historic 3.78-acre property began in 2019 when the mission crew introduced Robert A.M. Stern Architects (RAMSA) onto the mission. The corporate’s previous historical past of “engaged on tasks in delicate places” made it a perfect selection for the job, in response to RAMSA Companion Sargent Gardiner.
The mission was designed to match the facades, massing and inexperienced area of different websites in Fisher Hill. Designers with Finegold Alexander additionally collaborated on the mission and restored the prevailing Georgian Revival Mitton Home, in-built 1896, and gave residents entry to a residential piazza designed with ample seating and weather-protected parking.
The group design brings in free shingle, Queen Anne and asymmetrical colonial revival components whereas the historic-looking type conceals a high-tech inside able to delivering fashionable senior dwelling for a altering technology of older adults. The group was designed with LEED Gold and Passive Home certifications in thoughts. The location manages stormwater via an underground infiltration system and likewise reclaims rainwater whereas utilizing electrical heating and cooling methods to cut back emissions.
The mission deliberately hosted public enter durations to win over their neighbors, who valued historic character.
Residents within the space initially anxious about how the ultimate constructing would look, and the designers assuaged these fears by exhibiting the campus wouldn’t resemble a large, typical high-rise constructing or block constructing however moderately an “elegant collection of pavilions” that had been related.
“We needed to indicate that this was damaged down and extra intimate of their context than what some folks had been anxious about,” Gardiner mentioned. “We took a softer method providing hand-drawn sketches to assist folks not really feel intimated by the mission.”
The city accredited the mission in June 2020 and the crew accomplished ultimate designs from July to October of 2020.
The brand new constructing contains a collection of smaller pavilions that match into the positioning’s pure topography and align with the size of the three-story Mitton Home. Designers “deliberately misaligned” facets of the design to create “spatial complexity” and break up the size of the constructing.
The facade of the constructing references the “wealthy and various” historical past of the Fisher Hill space as bay home windows and dormers add selection to the clapboard facade and gambrel and hipped roofing reduces the constructing’s notion and dimension.
In whole, the crew saved roughly 40% of the positioning as open area to protect a historic and pure really feel to the property. Collectively, the buildings present 208,000 sq. toes of senior dwelling area with 159 items made up of 81 unbiased dwelling items, 38 assisted dwelling items and 40 reminiscence care items.
RAMSA designed the mission. Finegold Alexander Architects served as govt architect, Pembrooke & Ives offered inside design.
The development
Builders with HYM Funding Group, Dellbrook and JKS led building and bumped into challenges securing gear and supplies.
The mission crew grappled with the mission’s funds and on schedule in mild of building materials delays. In the end, the designers selected to substitute sure supplies for others to maintain the mission on funds.
“We wanted to be sure that the standard of the substitutions had been adequate that we wouldn’t get a name in 15 years,” Gardiner mentioned.
Many seen outcomes in building, together with shadow strains, trim depth and facade rhythm, got here from considerate and cost-conscious materials planning moderately than needing “uncommon or extravagant ones.” The constructing’s exterior cladding gives a primary instance of this high quality over extravagance because the mission makes use of fiber cement siding often known as Hardie board moderately than wooden building.
“High quality didn’t should be costly, it simply needed to be considerate,” Gardiner mentioned.
To suit the event into the encompassing Fisher Hill neighborhood, builders emphasised the small print, Gardiner added, utilizing nook boards, transitions and joints to offer the clapboard and shingle-style the “crispness” wanted to offer it a timeless aesthetic.
The crew standardized home windows and used different prefabricated components to simplify the construct, Gardiner mentioned, as bay home windows and dormers added selection whereas standardized home windows helped maintain procurement and set up shifting on schedule.
Mid-build, the crew added two rooftop patio and bar areas for residents and employees to get pleasure from panoramic views of the Boston skyline. Main into the group, the crew additionally modified rafters and used “easy” lighting fixtures that helped cut back exterior lighting prices by 35% of the unique value, Gardiner mentioned.
The “library connector,” a walkway connecting completely different elements of the constructing, added a singular factor to the development. The ramp served as a strategic function that allowed mission designers to save lots of almost $1 million in excavation prices by elevating the slab of the southern wing of the constructing by one foot, Gardiner famous.
Development was on time and funds in the long run, in response to Kisco Senior Vice President of Operations Chris Wingerberg.
“It was by far the smoothest opening and the constructing was in the very best general situation of any of the tasks that now we have opened,” Wingerberg mentioned.
The completion
Development crews accomplished work on The Newbury in September of 2024.
Facilities for the group embody a big, centralized eating room and adjoining nice room, lounge, salon, pool, health middle, library and sky bar. On-site nurses assist present care and cut back the necessity for emergency medical providers and the group additionally gives a shuttle service for residents between occasions and appointments. A fleet of electrical autos can be available for residents to make use of.
The constructing “blends seamlessly” and delivers what residents anticipate, Wingerberg mentioned.
“The design and the structure of the group are unimaginable and it blends seamlessly to the general Fisher Hill neighborhood,” Wingerberg mentioned.
The restoration and preservation of the Mitton Home serves as a “nice contact level” for residents and potential residents visiting the group, providing character and attraction that calls again to the positioning’s authentic historical past.
Within the months because the group opened, Wingerberg mentioned residents have repeatedly shared that the group has met or exceeded expectations, with the property’s historic preservation and a focus to element differentiating the property from different senior dwelling tasks.
The Skyline Bar, a rooftop patio providing panoramic views of Boston, has change into one of the in style components. The crew didn’t initially embody that factor within the design, but it surely grew out of the positioning’s pure topography, Wingerberg mentioned.
“There’s a lot richness and element and architectural articulation within the panorama that folks tour the positioning and are simply blown away and wish to transfer in,” Wingerberg mentioned.
HKS Principal and Senior Designer and SHN Structure and Design Award Decide Grant Warner mentioned the mission was an “unimaginable achievement” with the myriad website challenges.
“The inside amenity areas are beautiful and really feel surprisingly residential and intimate regardless of the size of the general mission. The outside massing went to great lengths to cut back scale to respect the neighboring single household houses. The piazza is an excellent answer to simplify circulation whereas respecting the prominence of the prevailing Mitton Home,” Warner mentioned.
The group is 64% occupied as we speak and is forward of its professional forma expectations, with the mission a part of Kisco’s gross sales and advertising efforts within the New England space, he added.
“We’re all very pleased and we delivered a product that’s cherished by Brookline and the design completely units us aside from the market,” Wingerberg mentioned.
