30-40 Court St

Where 30-40 Court St is

Its block in Downtown Boston, drawn from Boston's own building outlines and street centerlines.

The plan: window line, shape and floor rhythm

38 ft of exterior wall for each home the screen estimates — enough for two- and three-bedroom homes across the plan.

The typical floor has 1,836 ft of exterior wall, and across 6 residential floors the building carries 11,020 ft of it in total, divided among the 290 homes this screen estimates.

Its plate is highly articulated at 0.18: a long, notched or wing-shaped outline with far more facade than its area needs — wasteful as an office envelope, and close to ideal for apartments. How window line and plate shape are measured.

At the model’s 750 sq ft average, the plan works out at about 48.3 homes per floor, repeated on every residential floor, since this building's outline does not change as it rises.

Why 30-40 Court St scores 92 out of 100

Daylight efficiency 100, Interior depth 68, Scale 100, Finance 100 — each out of 100, then weighted.

Most of what it earns comes from daylight efficiency, and what holds it back most is interior depth, at 68 out of 100: deepest interior point 53 ft from a facade, scored from 80 ft down to 40 ft.

Built in 1915

Boston records this building as going up in 1915, which puts it in the pre-1920 stock.

As a rule, the era that converts most readily: load-bearing masonry, small floor plates laid out before deep-plan offices were possible, operable windows and generous floor-to-floor heights. The usual obstacles are not daylight but hazardous materials, lifts and bringing structure up to current code. That is the era’s general tendency rather than a finding about this building — the model reads an outline and a height, and can see nothing inside — but it is the first thing an architect would want to know, and it colours how much confidence the 94% daylight figure above deserves.

What the conversion would cost

$360 per square foot all-in across 290,962 sq ft of converted floor, or $104.7M in total — about $361K for each of the 290 homes.

That cost is charged across every converted square foot, including the 18,666 sq ft of windowless core, which has to be gutted, re-plumbed and sprinklered like the rest of the building and then earns nothing. Against it the model sets a completed value of $442K a home, which for 290 homes is $128.0M.

What would have to be true

This one already clears the bar. The question is how much room it has before it stops.

At $442K a home, completed value covers the $104.7M of work with $23.3M to spare. Value per home would have to fall to $361K — 18% below the assumption — before the conversion stopped penciling, or all-in cost would have to rise from $360 to $440 per square foot. Neither is a wide margin in a market that moves, but this building does not need a grant to work.

Each of these, moved on its own, would be enough to undo that for 30-40 Court St:

All four are sliders in the survey, where 30-40 Court St re-scores against your own numbers.

How it compares in Downtown Boston

30-40 Court St ranks 24th of the 96 buildings screened here, against a median score of 89.

Its floor plate is better lit than 61% of them, and shallower than 42% of them at its deepest interior point. On size it is the 34th largest by estimated homes. The full survey of all 96 buildings ranks and maps every one of them, and the list by address links each to its own page.

Within the SKY-LOW-DT zone

10th of 25 zoned SKY-LOW-DT — the comparison that shares its rules, rents and streets.

25 of the screened buildings are zoned SKY-LOW-DT. 30-40 Court St ranks 10th of them against a median score of 91. 24 score 70 or more, their median deepest interior point is 35 ft from a facade against this building’s 53 ft, and together they would hold an estimated 2,629 homes. The group’s top scorer is 36-44 Broad St, at 100.

Its nearest match in size: 89-103 Bedford St

The screened building closest to 30-40 Court St in converted floor area is 89-103 Bedford St: 301,885 sq ft over 8 stories, against 290,962 sq ft over 7 here.

The two land within a few points of each other — 92 here, 91 there — so at this size the screen reads them as much the same prospect. On the money they sit in the same place: each pencils without a subsidy. The two stand about 2,000 ft apart.

Would it qualify for a RESIDE Act grant?

The model awards 30-40 Court St $10.0M, on the assumption it qualifies. Whether it does, no published dataset can say.

That figure assumes the building meets the Act’s vacant-and-abandoned test, which turns on code-enforcement and receivership records no city publishes.

It does not sit in a 2018 designated Opportunity Zone, so it would not draw that Section 201 priority.

Other buildings screened near 30-40 Court St

The 4 closest the screen also covers, from 240 ft away. They are the colored outlines on the plan at the top of this page.

• 15 Court Sq
  11 stories · 100% daylit · 81 estimated homes · scores 93/100 (Strong candidate)
  about 240 ft away
• 25-55 Court St
  5 stories · 100% daylit · 46 estimated homes · scores 90/100 (Strong candidate)
  about 300 ft away
• 23-29 School St
  7 stories · 100% daylit · 43 estimated homes · scores 89/100 (Strong candidate)
  about 300 ft away
• 1 Beacon St
  42 stories · 65% daylit · 881 estimated homes · scores 55/100 (Worth a feasibility study)
  about 380 ft away