Today, Cynthia Greene gave us a tour of the McCormack Building in Boston. When we first got to the building, I was extreme scared, because we had to go through some of the most secured securities I have ever seen. It was a lot more scarier and strict than ones in the airports. As we went through the building, we were told to go to the fifteenth floor where we met Cynthia Greene, our tour guide. At first I couldn’t believe that it was a green building because it seemed like one of the tall skyscrapers in Boston.

As she began her tour, Cynthia told us that it was first built in 1930’s, or during the Great Depression, as a post office. The construction gave many jobs to the poor and the unemployed. However, it was burnt down due to a fire accident. As a result, the building had to be rebuilt. After the post office building was done, they named it the McCormack Building to honor the Congressman John McCormack in 1972.

All of these history of the building was very interesting. However, I was really more into learning about the “green” building portion of the building. As she led us to different part of the building such as the roof and some of the rooms, it was obvious that it was very well coordinated. The LED lights they used in the library, the garden at the top of the roof on the fourth floor. All of the stuff that they have fixed recently has been extraordinary. From my eighteen years of life experience, I have never seen such green buildings.

It was a very nice experience with Cynthia and as an environmental engineer, I would like to build something similar to these buildings all over the world.