The Prudential Center (colloquially the Pru) is an enclosed

shopping mall A shopping mall (or simply mall) is a North American term for a large indoor shopping center, usually anchored by department stores. The term "mall" originally meant a pedestrian promenade with shops along it (that is, the term was used to refe ...

within the mixed-use Prudential Center complex in the

Back Bay Back Bay is an officially recognized neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, built on reclaimed land in the Charles River basin. Construction began in 1859, as the demand for luxury housing exceeded the availability in the city at the time, and t ...

neighborhood of

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

Massachusetts Massachusetts (Massachusett language, Massachusett: ''Muhsachuweesut assachusett writing systems, məhswatʃəwiːsət'' English: , ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is the most populous U.S. state, state in the New England ...

. It is located at the base of the

Prudential Tower The Prudential Tower, also known as the Prudential Building or, colloquially, The Pru,subscription required'The Pru' everyone calls it: a resigned shrug of a name, as flat and uninflected as the wan moue its pronunciation requires." is an Inter ...

, and provides direct indoor connections to several nearby destinations including the

Hynes Convention Center The John B. Hynes Veterans Memorial Convention Center is a convention center located in Boston, Massachusetts. It was built in 1988 from a design by architects Kallmann, McKinnell & Wood. It replaced the John B. Hynes Memorial Auditorium, also ...

, the office towers at 101 and

111 Huntington Avenue 111 Huntington Avenue is a Boston skyscraper. Located on Huntington Avenue, it is part of the Prudential Center (Boston), Prudential Center complex that also houses the Prudential Tower. Completed in 2002, the tower is tall and houses 36 floors. ...

, and the Sheraton Boston hotel. The mall is connected to the

Copley Place Copley Place is an enclosed shopping mall within the mixed-use Copley Square in the Back Bay neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. It features direct indoor connections to several nearby destinations including four office towers, and the Bosto ...

shopping mall via a skybridge over

Huntington Avenue Huntington Avenue is a secondary thoroughfare in the city of Boston, Massachusetts, beginning at Copley Square, and continuing west through the Back Bay, Fenway, Longwood, and Mission Hill neighborhoods. Huntington Avenue is signed as Route 9 ...

. As of 2022, the complex currently features a

Saks Fifth Avenue Saks Fifth Avenue (originally Saks & Company; Colloquialism, colloquially Saks) is an American Luxury goods, luxury department store chain headquartered in New York City and founded by Andrew Saks. The original store opened in the F Street and ...

, and notable brands such as

Earl's Earls Kitchen + Bar is a Canadian-based premium casual dining chain that operates a total of 68 restaurants in Canada and the United States. Their head office is in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. History Founding Leroy Earl "Bus" Fuller ( ...

Lacoste Lacoste S.A. is a French company, founded in 1933 by tennis player René Lacoste, and entrepreneur Mangkha. It sells clothing, footwear, sportswear, eyewear, leather goods, perfume, towels and watches. The company can be recognised by its gree ...

Club Monaco Club Monaco is a Canadian-founded low-end luxury casual clothing retailer owned by Regent, L.P. With more than 140 locations worldwide, the retailer has locations in the United States, Canada, Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, South Korea, China, the U ...

Ralph Lauren Ralph Lauren, ( ; ; born October 14, 1939) is an American fashion designer, philanthropist, and billionaire businessman, best known for the Ralph Lauren Corporation, a global multibillion-dollar enterprise. He has become well known for his co ...

, and

Vineyard Vines Vineyard Vines is an American clothing and accessory retailer founded in 1998 in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, by brothers Shep and Ian Murray. The brand markets high-end ties, hats, belts, shirts, shorts, swimwear, bags for men, women, an ...

Description

Mandarin Oriental Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group International Limited (MOHG) is a Hong Kong hotel investment and management group focusing on luxury hotels, resorts, and residences, with a total of 33 properties worldwide, 20 of which are fully or partially ow ...

hotel is part of the complex, as well as the Avalon and the Belvidere Residences apartments. A large

Star Market Star Market is a New England chain of supermarkets based in Greater Boston. It was owned by the Mugar family and started in 1915. The company was sold to The Jewel Companies, Inc. in 1964 and later to Investcorp, which in turn sold the chain to ...

supermarket A supermarket is a self-service Retail#Types of outlets, shop offering a wide variety of food, Drink, beverages and Household goods, household products, organized into sections. This kind of store is larger and has a wider selection than earli ...

is located across a small side street bordering the mall. The shopping complex is anchored by

. The mall is home to over 75 specialty retailers, including upscale stores such as

, and more. The St. Francis Chapel, a functioning

Roman Catholic Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *'' Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lette ...

chapel A chapel is a Christian place of prayer and worship that is usually relatively small. The term has several meanings. Firstly, smaller spaces inside a church that have their own altar are often called chapels; the Lady chapel is a common ty ...

staffed by the

Oblates of the Virgin Mary The Oblates of the Virgin Mary (Italian: ''Oblati di Maria Vergine'') is a religious institute of priests and brothers founded by Bruno Lanteri (1759–1830) in the Kingdom of Sardinia in the early 19th century. The institute is characterized by a ...

and located inside the shopping center since 1969, offers daily services and a religious giftshop. Around 20 food-related businesses ranging from quick snacks to fine dining are located at the mall, with many other independent restaurants located nearby outside. A open-market format

Eataly Eataly is a chain of large format/footprint Italian marketplaces (food halls) comprising a variety of restaurants, food and beverage counters, bakery, retail items, and a cooking school. Eataly was founded by Oscar Farinetti, an entrepreneur form ...

location was opened in November 2016, replacing a former

food court A food court (in Asia-Pacific also called food hall or hawker centre) is generally an indoor plaza or common area within a facility that is contiguous with the counters of multiple food vendors and provides a common area for self-serve dinner. I ...

within the mall. Transportation connections include the Prudential subway station and the nearby

Hynes Convention Center station Hynes Convention Center station is an underground light rail station on the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) Green Line. It is located at the intersection of Newbury Street and Massachusetts Avenue near the western end of th ...

, both on branches of the

MBTA Green Line The Green Line is a light rail system run by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) in the Boston, Massachusetts, metropolitan area. It is the oldest MBTA subway line, and with tunnel sections dating from 1897, the oldest subway ...

. The Back Bay multimodal station, with access to the

MBTA Orange Line The Orange Line is a rapid transit line operated by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) as part of the MBTA subway system. The line runs south on the surface from Oak Grove station in Malden, Massachusetts through Malden and Me ...

MBTA Commuter Rail The MBTA Commuter Rail system serves as the commuter rail arm of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority's transportation coverage of Greater Boston in the United States. Trains run over of track to 141 different stations, with 58 statio ...

, and

Amtrak The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, Trade name, doing business as Amtrak () , is the national Passenger train, passenger railroad company of the United States. It operates inter-city rail service in 46 of the 48 contiguous United Stat ...

inter-city rail, is a short climate-controlled walk away via the adjacent

shopping mall. Multiple bus routes stop at the center, and there is underground parking available on-site.

History

The location originally consisted of marshlands next to the

Charles River The Charles River ( Massachusett: ''Quinobequin)'' (sometimes called the River Charles or simply the Charles) is an river in eastern Massachusetts. It flows northeast from Hopkinton to Boston along a highly meandering route, that doubles b ...

in the

district of Boston. These wetlands were gradually filled in, and a large railyard was built. In the early 1960s, the railyard was replaced by the

and several smaller buildings. Originally, only one department store ( Saks), along with a handful of shops, existed around the base of the Prudential Tower in a small shopping arcade. Nearby structures including the

, 101 Huntington Avenue office tower, a

Sheraton Hotel Sheraton Hotels and Resorts is an international semi-luxury hotel chain owned by Marriott International. As of June 30, 2020, Sheraton operates 446 hotels with 155,617 rooms globally, including locations in North America, Africa, Asia Pacific, Cen ...

, and other various shops were separated by open plazas in a patchwork of disjointed buildings. A large, windswept paved plaza off

Boylston Street Boylston Street is a major east–west thoroughfare in the city of Boston, Massachusetts. The street begins in Boston's Chinatown neighborhood, forms the southern border of the Boston Public Garden and Boston Common, runs through Back Bay, and e ...

was dominated by a sculptural bronze male nude by Boston-educated artist Donald Harcourt De Lue, titled ''Quest Eternal'', and installed in 1967. Popularly known as "The Naked Guy", the 5-ton sculpture, cast in one piece, depicted a

Mannerist Mannerism, which may also be known as Late Renaissance, is a style in European art that emerged in the later years of the Italian High Renaissance around 1520, spreading by about 1530 and lasting until about the end of the 16th century in Italy, ...

heroic figure stretched diagonally upwards towards the sky. In 1991, a plan was put forth to connect all of the buildings together with an enclosed and expanded shopping center, in the area bordered by Boylston Street,

, and Dalton Street.

The Hahn Company The Hahn Company, San Diego, California, alternately known as Ernest W. Hahn, Inc., was a major American shopping center owner and developer from the 1950s to the 1980s. Purchased by the Trizec Corp. in 1980 (which then took the name TrizecHahn), ...

, together with then-owner

Prudential Insurance Company of America Prudential Financial, Inc. is an American Fortune Global 500 and Fortune 500 company whose subsidiaries provide insurance, retirement planning, investment management, and other products and services to both retail and institutional customers t ...

, spent over two years developing the $100 million project. In 1993, the new Shops at Prudential Center was completed, and largely successful in filling its new spaces. Multiple buildings surrounding the Prudential Center were now connected through the shopping arcade, with pedestrian traffic ranging from office workers to convention attendees, able to travel conveniently to various destinations regardless of the weather outside. In 2014, a new entrance to the Prudential Center was built to replace the remaining open plaza bordering Boylston Street. This required that the ''Quest Eternal'' statue be removed, and its whereabouts and future were unknown to the general public. In 2019, the

Boston City Council The Boston City Council is the legislative branch of government for the city of Boston, Massachusetts. It is made up of 13 members: 9 district representatives and 4 at-large members. Councillors are elected to two-year terms and there is no ...

announced that it had accepted the donation of the statue from

Boston Properties Boston Properties, Inc. is a publicly traded real estate investment trust that invests in premier workplaces in Boston, Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. As of June 30, 2022, the company owned or had interest ...

, and would install it in the public Smith Playground, near the intersection of Western Avenue and North Harvard Street in the

Allston Allston is an officially recognized neighborhood within the City of Boston, Massachusetts, United States. It was named after the American painter and poet Washington Allston. It comprises the land covered by the zip code 02134. For the most part ...

district. There remain several smaller works of

public art Public art is art in any Media (arts), media whose form, function and meaning are created for the general public through a public process. It is a specific art genre with its own professional and critical discourse. Public art is visually and phy ...

at the Prudential Center complex, including temporary art installations. On August 24, 2020, it was announced that high end regional division

Lord & Taylor Lord & Taylor was the oldest brick and mortar department store in the United States, in business from 1826 to 2020. The brand was purchased during former owner Le Tote's 2020 liquidation bankruptcy and relaunched by new owner, Saadia Group, as ...

would shutter. On June 30, 2022, it was announced that

Dick's Sporting Goods Dick's Sporting Goods, Inc. (stylized as "DICK'S Sporting Goods") is an American sporting goods retail company, based in Coraopolis, Pennsylvania. The company was established by Richard "Dick" Stack in 1948, and has approximately 854 stores an ...

was in final negotiations to take over the Lord & Taylor building at the center for its House of Sports concept store.

Reception

In November 2019, the online business news website MassLive rated the Shops at Prudential Center as fifth, and the immediately adjacent

as fourth best among 40 malls and shopping centers in Massachusetts.

Gallery

Interior of Shops at Prudential Center, Boston.jpg, Interior of promenade (July 2011) New Lord and Taylor Boston.jpg,

''(now closed)'' entrance at Prudential Center (2007) 100 Belvidere Street Boston - buildings 63.jpg, Entrance at corner of Huntington Avenue and Belvidere Street USA-Boston-Prudential Center0.jpg, Pedestrian crossroads inside mall Shinola Retail Location in Boston Massachusetts.jpg, Shinola retail location (2017) Prudential Tower Boston 2012.jpg, View of the Prudential Tower from The Shops at Prudential Center (2012) Prudential Center courtyard, Boston, MA.jpg, Publicly-accessible outdoors roofdeck garden at base of the

Downtown Boston at dusk.jpg, Pedestrian skybridge connects

mall (at right) to Prudential Center shops Entrance to Prudential MBTA station, November 2009.jpg, Prudential MBTA subway station entrance at the mall Rendering of Prudential Center (18887707812).jpg, Original architectural rendering shows discrete buildings separated by outdoors plazas

References

External links

Official site

Prudential Center area map
{{DEFAULTSORT:Prudential Center (shopping mall) Shopping malls in Massachusetts Buildings and structures in Boston Prudential Financial buildings Shopping malls established in 1993 1993 establishments in Massachusetts