landmark · official boundary
Sears Building
A property designated a landmark by the Boston Landmarks Commission. At Exterior only, Site parcels 2100077000 and 2100077010 are Protection Area.
Place
official layer
An official boundary, promulgated by an authority with the power to draw it. It is not amended by anything on the vernacular layer.
- Filed by this archive as
- landmark
- Authority
- Boston Landmarks Commission
- Within
- Boston
- Area
- 3.20 hectares
- Boundary
- held as GeoJSON at
/asset/aca5f222fe21159ae929fc014ecf7a2e/sears-building.geojson— 1712 bytes, exactly as accessioned
Map
image/svg+xml at /asset/5e93a7f4e1c88dfb3fa4b9ad1b63e548/sears-building.svg — 1626 bytes, SHA-256 5e93a7f4e1c88dfb… · Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication and Licence (PDDL) 1.0The exact coordinates are held separately as
/asset/aca5f222fe21159ae929fc014ecf7a2e/sears-building.geojson (application/geo+json, 1712 bytes, SHA-256 aca5f222fe21159a…). The map is simplified for drawing; the boundary is not.Questions this record answers
Each answer is composed only from fields this record carries, and names the attestation for what it says. A question the record cannot answer from its own attested content is not asked here. Where a boundary is described as official it was promulgated by an authority with the power to draw it and is not amended by anything on the vernacular layer; where it is described as vernacular it is held by attestation alone and amends no official boundary.
Where is Sears Building, and what kind of boundary does the archive hold?
Sears Building is recorded as a landmark, within Boston. The archive holds its boundary on the official layer: promulgated by an authority with the power to draw it.
Attested by: City of Boston Open Data Portal (Analyze Boston), retrieved 2 September 2026, under Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication and Licence (PDDL) 1.0.
Who drew the boundary of Sears Building?
Boston Landmarks Commission promulgated it. A boundary with no promulgating authority is an assertion rather than a fact, and this archive files those separately, as claims.
Attested by: City of Boston Open Data Portal (Analyze Boston), retrieved 2 September 2026, under Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication and Licence (PDDL) 1.0.
How large is Sears Building?
3.20 hectares, computed from the boundary the archive holds and not quoted from elsewhere.
Attested by: City of Boston Open Data Portal (Analyze Boston), retrieved 2 September 2026, under Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication and Licence (PDDL) 1.0.
What does the archive's map of Sears Building show?
A static map of the boundary, rendered by the archive on a server and never in a reader's browser, served as image/svg+xml at /asset/5e93a7f4e1c88dfb3fa4b9ad1b63e548/sears-building.svg. The exact coordinates it was drawn from are served separately as application/geo+json at /asset/aca5f222fe21159ae929fc014ecf7a2e/sears-building.geojson.
Attested by: Rendered by archive-ingest 0.1.0 from the boundary this archive holds; digest 5e93a7f4e1c88dfb3fa4b9ad1b63e548fec9a4f46d14f9a0b8204fc3fbb76d2b.
What else does the world call Sears Building?
The archive reconciles this record to Wikidata (Q131782599). Each identity carries the method that produced it, and any candidate the archive did not assert is published in the reconciliation ledger rather than left absent.
Attested by: Q131782599 — Q131782599 — label "Sears Building", classed as building, decided 3 September 2026 by archive-ingest 0.1.0
What does the archive hold for Sears Building, and under what license?
The Boston Archive holds this record of Sears Building from City of Boston Open Data Portal (Analyze Boston), retrieved 2 September 2026, under Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication and Licence (PDDL) 1.0 (public domain). 4 recorded transforms stand between the retrieved bytes and this record. Attribution is due to City of Boston.
Attested by: City of Boston Open Data Portal (Analyze Boston), retrieved 2 September 2026, under Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication and Licence (PDDL) 1.0.
This record, elsewhere
Identities the archive asserts, each named with the method that produced it. Candidates the archive did not assert here are held in the reconciliation ledger and are shown below, under candidates the archive declined, and in the reconciliation ledger. Each method is stated in full — the procedure, the value it was compared against, and the date it was decided — in this record's machine rendering.
- Wikidata —
Q131782599Method: label-type-geography (administrative containment) · Matched against: Q131782599 — label "Sears Building", classed as building · 3977 m apart · Decided 3 September 2026Note: Wikidata's published coordinate for Q131782599 lies 3977 m from the centroid of the boundary this archive holds. The identity is carried by name, class, and administrative containment; the coordinate disagreement is recorded here so a reader is not surprised by it.
Related records
- located in — Boston
Identity
- Identifier
- urn:lemay:boston:entity:sears-building
- Canonical URL
- https://boston.fyi/place/sears-building
- As JSON
- https://boston.fyi/place/sears-building.json
- Version
- 1 · last changed 2 September 2026
Provenance
- Source
- City of Boston Open Data Portal (Analyze Boston) — source of record
- License
- Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication and Licence (PDDL) 1.0 (public_domain)
- Retrieved
- 2 September 2026
- Source identifier
- 140
- Attribution
- City of Boston
- Rights as stated
- Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication and License (PDDL)
Transform ladder
| # | Operation | Description | Tool |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | fetch | retrieved the dataset's GeoJSON from the City of Boston open-data portal | archive-ingest 0.1.0 |
| 2 | normalize | the source's own name field became the record title; no name was supplied by the archive | archive-ingest 0.1.0 |
| 3 | reproject | the source is WGS 84 (EPSG:4326); geometry was set to that SRID without alteration of coordinates | archive-ingest 0.1.0 |
| 4 | externalize-boundary | The boundary left the inline page graph and became two preserved holdings: the exact coordinates at /asset/aca5f222fe21159ae929fc014ecf7a2e/sears-building.geojson and a static map rendered server-side at /asset/5e93a7f4e1c88dfb3fa4b9ad1b63e548/sears-building.svg. The stored geometry is unchanged; the record graph now addresses it instead of carrying it. | archive-ingest 0.1.0 |