Framingham, MA, 1969 by Fletcher Thompson
Spend any amount of time admiring modern architecture and you’re sure to notice that many iconic designs are coated in the iconic orange of the truck rental company UHaul. The company prides itself on buying underutilized, often oversized buildings and converting them into facilities for storage or truck pickup. The goal, according to the company, is to avoid the excess carbon emissions associated with new construction while preserving a neighborhood’s existing character.
As such, this building was not originally a UHaul, but a state of the art laboratory and office space for the American Optical Company. The company had seen exponential growth after becoming the sunglasses of choice for President John F. Kennedy and opened the Framingham site for their growing research and development sector for military, medical and scientific product development. The building was designed by Fletcher and Thompson, an industrial engineering firm that had been transformed into one of the largest architectural firms in the country by architect J. Gerald Phelan. The original building was most likely an austere precast structure, consisting only of the finned lower portion of the building. The iconic glass crown wouldn’t be added until 1983 when American Optical would expand their office space.
The building would eventually end up being occupied by Genzyme before moving into their new facilities on nearby New York Ave. The site sat empty after a failed expansion attempt would have almost doubled the size of the 90,000 square foot facility until UHaul acquired the property in 2018. While the exterior changes are mostly cosmetic, the inside was gutted to create a massive self storage facility.
Sources:
Connecticut Architect, May-June 1966.
“Sustaining Framingham: U-Haul Repurposing Old Office Building” UHaul, June 2019
Framingham Zoning Board of Appeals, 1966.
Southborough, MA Assessor’s Office
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