The Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute (BPSI) sold its beautiful Back Bay mansion at 15 Commonwealth Avenue in the spring of 2012. It was a difficult decision. So identified were we with our building that its image has been our logo, representing us visually on our website, diplomas, stationery, mouse pad, folders, and wherever else we put our stamp. The question of whether to sell was initially so divisive that it threatened to split the society. But wise leadership, seemingly summoned up by our need, led us through a long process of self-reflection and renewal to redefine our mission and to face some challenging realities, including fiscal ones. When we voted once more, after this process, the decision was unanimous.
Our unanimity was a triumph. We secured lovely new quarters, which fit our needs better than did 15 Commonwealth Avenue. We escaped the looming financial threat posed by maintaining an old building. We even pocketed a respectable sum for our endowment. And we were a rejuvenated and united society.
But even triumphs can have their sadness. Amidst our celebration, we now turned together to the business of loss, the mourning for our beloved home of 60 years. How to memorialize it? Once again, need summoned up the appropriate response, this time in the person of Allen Palmer. Chair of the Committee of Training Analysts during our period of self-examination, Palmer well understood the meaning of the building to BPSI. And he happens to be a gifted photographer, whose sensitive and penetrating portraits of senior analysts graced the walls of our classrooms. Palmer took on the task of capturing the spirit and architectural detail of our building in a series of photographs that have been compiled as a memorial volume and tribute. The book is titled, simply, 15
Fifteen Commonwealth Avenue was built as a grand residence in 1867 with money reaped from the China and India sea trade. In 1898 it was sold to the Ames family, whose wealth had been extracted from the bogs of New England in the form of bog iron. They promptly hired Ogden Codman to completely redecorate their home. Codman, architect to the Vanderbilts and Rockefellers, had just published with Edith Wharton their classic treatise on Beaux-Arts interior design, The Decoration of Houses. In Ogden's hands, 15 Commonwealth Avenue became an opulent home, replete with richly detailed wood carvings, molded plaster, elaborate wrought iron, and the like. Much of that elaborate ornamentation survives to grace the building today—and to be lovingly captured in Allen Palmer's photographs.
Palmer's book invites us into the building, starting with close-up photographs of the front door and context shots of the remarkable street in which the building is situated. In the middle of the first block of Commonwealth Avenue, adjacent to the Boston Public Garden, Number 15 is set in an extraordinary and graceful stretch of historic Back Bay architecture. Turning the pages of Palmer's book of images, we tour the interior of the building in two phases, divided in the center of the volume by a brief return outside to glory in the magnificent pink magnolia trees that frame the front door and line the entire block.
The interior photos interpose close-ups of opulent architectural decoration with photos of the workspaces, library, meeting rooms, and classrooms of BPSI. This intermixture is fitting, documenting the way a living organization inhabited and honored this space built for another time and a very different purpose.
Alan Pollack, M.D., is a member of the faculty of the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, where he served as director of Psychotherapy Training for 24 years.
And there is resonance for psychoanalysis in all the fin de siècle finery. Ogden Codman was shaping 15 Commonwealth Avenue just as Freud was creating psychoanalysis. The Ames family moved in the same year that Freud published The Interpretation of Dreams. One can imagine fine homes in Vienna, at the time psychoanalysis was born, ornamented very much like Number 15.
It is the photos of empty offices and classrooms that I keep coming back to. They are haunting. There are no people, although the desks and tables remain cluttered with the stuff of a busy working office. The way these empty rooms remain fully intact creates an elegiac mood. It is as if the people of BPSI had suddenly been evacuated, leaving the building waiting, in vain, for our return. The building almost grieves for us—“almost,” because it seems not yet to have quite accepted that we will not be returning. Palmer has effected a subtle reversal here, projecting our grief onto the building. It is poignant and perfect for evoking simultaneously our sadness and our love for our Commonwealth Avenue home.
The volume concludes resplendently, with a photo on the back cover of the block at night, lights aglow. Number 15 is framed on either side by trees wrapped in glowing white Christmas lights. Allen Palmer's book captures the glow of our feelings for this remarkable building, the building that we were proud to call home for 60 years.
Editor's Note: The book 15 is available on Blurb.com. Allen Palmer's artistry can also be sampled at his website, AllenPalmer Photography.com. Among other delights found there are his superb portraits of senior analysts. Click on the Additional Projects tab, then on The Face of Experience.