Those Window Pains

The John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Co.'s $95 million headquarters in Boston may be the most famous new building in the U.S.--and all because of its window pains. The 60-story tower is supposed to be sheathed with 10,344 windows of a double-paned insulating glass that reflect the Copley Square surroundings. Trouble is, about 3,500 of those windows have cracked, and some of them have even fallen off the building, delaying occupancy for months.

As word of the window woes spread, suggestions began to flow to Hancock executives from all over the nation. A Cleveland man proposed boring tiny holes in each pane to equalize pressure inside and out. A Maryland convict advised Hancock to put boxes under each window to catch the glass fragments. One superstitious woman even told the insurance company to "sell the building," since every broken mirror-window represented seven years of bad luck--20,000 years of it in total. Instead, each flawed window has been temporarily replaced with sheets of plywood, leading Bostonians to nickname the building "the Plywood Palace."

What caused the problem? With a number of lawsuits possibly in the offing, no one is saying. But last week Hancock and its architects, I.M. Pei & Partners, announced a solution. Over a period of seven months, every single window will be replaced with heat-treated glass of the kind used in safety doors. The estimated cost: between $5,000,000 and $7,000,000.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.