Natick Village Mall and Hilton Inn

Natick, MA, 1979, by Richard L. Bowen and Associates

When construction began on this combination strip mall and hotel along Route 9, the small factory town of Natick was beginning to see some big changes. While the site was still filled with the scent of fresh bread from the nearby Wonderbread Factory, on its other side, the Carling Brewery, which thirty years ago had opened as “America’s most modern brewery” was set to be converted into the headquarters for the tech firm Prime Computers. The same explosion of new roads and highways that had paved the way for America’s Technology Highway to come to Metro West  were also making it an attractive destination for visiting businessmen and tourists in the Boston area. 

The Hilton Inn (now Hampton Inn) was proposed on the site of the old Natick Drive in Movie theater and was based entirely around the automobile. A sea of parking lots surround the building and allow for easy access to Route 9 and subsequently the Mass Pike and Route 128 (now Interstate 95). The seven story, 200-room luxury hotel, designed by Richard Bowen and Associates from Ohio, is covered in precast concrete panels and bookended by ribbed concrete forms which seem to house the egress stairs. At some point in the past five years or so a minimal white, black, and red color scheme was replaced with the grey, black, green and brown scheme seen today. The new look breaks down the facade into more component parts, accentuating the vertical and horizontal bands of the design.

Source:

“Break Ground for Hilton Inn at Speen Street” Natick Bulletin, 1978.