REAL ESTATE: Deep in the Heart of Boston

Many an outsider thinks of Boston as a place largely populated by professors, antiquarians, dowagers, and other quaint characters who still like their Martinis three to one. But not Roger L. (for Lacey) Stevens A 42-year-old Detroiter who rose from filling-station grease monkey to millionaire, Stevens was in the group that bought Manhattan’s Empire State Building for $51 million a year ago “because it looked like a cheap piece of real estate” (TIME, June 4, 1951 et seq.). To him Boston is another such property.

Last week Stevens signed a contract to buy a 28-acre site in the heart of Back Bay, only a block from Copley Square, for $4,500,000. On the property, now covered by Boston & Albany Railroad yards, Stevens and associates expect to build a $75-million business and entertainment center along the lines of Manhattan’s Rockefeller Center—only bigger. Still in the early planning stages, the new center would include a much-needed convention hall, two office buildings, a shopping center, a professional building for doctors and dentists, a theater, a hotel and a 10,000-car underground garage. Said Boston’s Mayor John B. Hynes: “This deal certainly explodes any myth that Boston is done for.”