Back Bay penthouse condo for sale in one of Boston’s original ‘apartment hotels’
191 Commonwealth Avenue, better known as Hotel Agassiz, is a luxury condo building with quite a history.
191 Commonwealth Avenue #61 is a four-bedroom, four-bathroom, 4,072-sqaure-foot luxury penthouse condo for sale in a six-story building with 16 units total.
But 191 Commonwealth Ave. wasn’t always full of condos, and in fact holds an interesting place in the history of Boston residential life.
When the massive building was constructed in 1872, there were only six units.
These original apartments were floor-through units, or “French flats,’’ meaning they were vertically oriented with access to each of the six floors.
The building was called Hotel Agassiz – not to be confused with the modern definition of a hotel. 191 Commonwealth Avenue was an “apartment hotel,’’ which started to become popular in the late 19th century. Modeled after a hotel in the sense that multiple tenants lived in the same building, apartment hotels “were quite distinct from commercial hotels catering primarily to transients,’’ according to Douglass Shand-Tucci in his book, Built in Boston: City and Suburb, 1800-2000.
Apartment hotels were meant for more permanent residents. Essentially, they catered to the first of Boston’s now-ubiquitous monthly renters.
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See inside the 191 Commonwealth Avenue penthouse:
This was true with Hotel Agassiz, as it was one of the first five apartment hotels in the city and for that matter, one of the first in the country.
In 1965, The Boston Globe reported the home was sold to the Munick Realty Trust with the description:
“Over the past 91 years, the original six apartments, with about 18 to 20 rooms each, have been modified and today there are 16 apartments with about 6 to 10 rooms each. The original 21 water closets have been replaced by modern bathrooms, and the fireplaces are no longer required to provide heat. Designed to provide luxury living, the former Hotel Agassiz, with its 11-foot ceilings, still provides the finest in gracious intown living, and is another example of the fine ‘Old Boston’ just a few blocks away from Boston’s newest and tallest structure, the Prudential Tower.’’
By May 1973, the apartments were turned into condos and were then available for sale, according to backbayhouses.org.
The penthouse condo for sale today for $5,400,000 is very modern, but still has original details, high ceilings, and hardwood floors. There are plenty of windows, with four different exposures that have views of the Commonwealth Mall. It has a library with a bay window, a large living room with fireplaces, a skylight in the dining room, and a kitchen with double ovens, marble countertops, and three sinks.
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