Lessons In Adaptive Reuse, Inclusive Design At The Pryde  

The Pryde, Hyde Park, Massachusetts

Recognizing a disparity and need for affordable senior housing that’s welcoming to all in the Boston area, LGBTQ Senior Housing Inc. formed in 2018 to advocate for and develop housing that serves this need.

“We know that our LGBTQ elders have a smaller safety net. They have smaller family units and traditionally less community support, which results in a higher incidence of housing, food, and financial instability,” says Gretchen Van Ness, executive director of LGBTQ Senior Housing Inc.

As part of its mission, the group began evaluating potential sites for a new LGBTQ-friendly senior community that was within walking distance to shopping, dining, and other amenities as well as public transportation.

In 2018, the not-for-profit found an opportunity when the City of Boston sought to convert the former William Barton Rogers Middle School to housing. The historic school, which closed in 2015, comprises three 4-story buildings—the original hall built in 1902 and two additions completed in 1922 and 1933—on a 74,000-square-foot site.

The location, in Boston’s Hyde Park neighborhood, checked all the boxes, including connection to public transportation and proximity to a library, cultural center, theater, and commercial strip. “It was a very obvious choice,” says Philippe Saad, a founding member of LGBTQ Senior Housing Inc., and principal at DiMella Shaffer (Boston), the architect on the project.

When the City of Boston issued the request for proposal for the reuse of the abandoned school, LGBTQ Senior Housing Inc. advocated for LGBTQ-friendly senior housing among city officials, Hyde Park residents, and the LGBTQ+ community, paved the way to the group’s partnership with Pennrose and their winning proposal.  The proposal was backed by over 400 letters of support—more than any other submission. Van Ness described this process as “a grassroots political campaign” that involved extensive door-to-door outreach and meetings with local business owners and neighborhood associations. 

“It felt like we were putting forward a brand-new candidate for elected office, but that process was really remarkable, because it shaped a lot of how this building was eventually designed and what was included in it,” she says. Specifically, LGBTQ Senior Housing heard feedback from community members on the importance of preserving the history of the building and its support to senior housing. Our team went a step further and decided to include a community center that’s open and accessible to the public.

“This process helped to build support for the idea of LGBTQ-welcoming affordable senior housing because nobody had ever seen that before in Boston,” says Van Ness. “The Hyde Park community was overwhelmingly in support of having this first-of-its-kind of housing in Boston in the heart of our community, and that is really a testament to the way the project happened and how it was welcomed by the community.” 

Outlining The Pryde

The project is named The Pryde with a “Y,” as a nod to its Hyde Park neighborhood. Primarily an adaptive reuse project, with extensive renovations to the historic building, the project would also include new construction limited to two new exterior elevator bays and a covered sunroom, wrapping around one of the bays and looking out onto a new courtyard. 

Overall, the plans included 74 residential units, ranging from 565 to 856 square feet with studio, one, and two-bedroom floor plans, laid out in the former classroom spaces on each floor, while the cafeteria on the first floor was  subdivided into eight residential units. 

The amenities and communal spaces are distributed on 3 floors including the auditorium, fitness and wellness spaces and the community center which includes an art room, a learning center, an art gallery and a large multi-purpose space. and  

The design of the building started in 2019 and construction began in 2022, after delays related to the COVID pandemic and navigating through processes to obtain financing, including low-income housing credits and Community Preservation Act Funds. To secure historic tax credits and designation, the project also had to pass design reviews by the Massachusetts Historic Commission and the National Parks Service, the federal agency that oversees the adaptive reuse of landmarks. 

Adaptive reuse in senior living

While adaptive reuse can be more complicated than new construction, and not always cheaper, the project team saw an opportunity to deliver a unique affordable senior living community to Boston, says Karmen Cheung, regional vice president of Pennrose, the owner/developer on the project. “Part of what drew us to the building is that we know historic schools like this have an importance to the community and to the neighborhood,” she says.

For example, Saad says, budget constraints often prevent developers and designers of affordable senior communities from including large amenity spaces. However, here, the historic school’s existing gymnasium, auditorium, and tiered classroom could be renovated into public spaces, including turning the tiered classroom into a movie theater.

Balancing historic guidelines with residents’ needs required the project team and the Historic Commission to compromise in some aspects of the design. For example, the guidelines state that echoes in the hallways had to be preserved because that’s part of the character-defining elements of the historic school. “Those of us who work in senior housing know that echo is not good for older adults,” Saad says, because it can cause confusion.

The solution was to apply acoustic treatments—stretched fabric rather than ceiling tiles, which were prohibited by the historic guidelines—to dampen sound and reduce echo in the larger communal gathering spaces, such as the auditorium and community center, which would be used more widely and often than the hallways.

Interior design and wayfinding strategies

The historic guidelines also stated that the original classroom doors had to remain in place. However, some of those doors did not meet fire ratings for current construction standards and could not be used as residential unit doors. The solution was to pin open the original doors in the corridors and install a new fire-rated door in the doorway.

To avoid confusion and assist with wayfinding, the pinned historic doors were painted white to match the corridor walls, while the functioning doors, along with other active spaces, were painted in colors assigned to each floor to help guide residents to their desired location. The color palette was inspired by the Pride Flag with each floor assigned two of the eight colors—“purple and orange on the first floor, green and yellow on the second, blue and red on the third, and pink and brown on the fourth, with black accents in the handles and light fixtures,” Saad explains.

The one exception is the community center, “which has all of the colors, because that is where everybody comes together all of the time, unified as one community,” Saad says.

Residential units highlight many of the building’s original features, too, such as 10-14-foot-tall ceilings and large windows that maximize the amount of natural light. Most of the units also contain school chalkboards in their original placement, which might be in the kitchen, bedroom, or living room. “No two units are exactly the same,” Cheung says.

LGBTQ-supportive senior housing

Recognizing that there’s still is not a lot of data on what makes a community LGBTQ-friendly, Saad says the project team had to rely a lot on their own experiences and memories. “What we do know is that community and social spaces are very important for the LGBTQ population, but not everyone’s desire to socialize is equal,” he says.

With that in mind, The Pryde offers a variety of spaces, including small nooks in the corridors outside residential units on each floor that are treated as “front porches” by the residents. Additionally, the landscaped courtyard features raised garden beds, a pergola with seating for up to 10 people, and a walking loop.

Variety in residential units, including more two-bedroom units than are typical in senior housing, is also important, Saad says. “Sometimes LGBTQ households are two roommates who might not be related or sleep in the same bed,” he says, adding that The Pryde houses 25 studios, 41 one-bedroom units, and eight two-bedroom units.

Together, these efforts, coupled with the unique design features of the building, became a way to reflect the diversity of the residents and an expression of the sentiment that was sought from the beginning of the project: “Welcoming to all.”

Robert McCune is senior editor of Environments for Aging and can be reached at [email protected]