Susan Park President's Award for Excellence: Steven Samuels

The founder and chairman of Samuels & Associates, Steven Samuels has demonstrated throughout his career that preservation and development are not competing objectives, but essential partners in creating a vibrant Boston.

Samuels has championed the adaptive reuse and reinvention of significant historic places, most notably in the Fenway. His transformation of 401 Park Drive, a 1928 Sears Roebuck building, won a Boston Preservation Alliance Preservation Achievement Award in 2022. Other notable projects include The Brynx, and The Verb Hotel, a preserved mid-century motor inn that now celebrates Boston’s rich music history.

His work in the Fenway demonstrates a sustained commitment to respecting Boston’s architectural heritage while allowing neighborhoods to evolve. Samuels’ greatest contribution may be his ability to make preservation economically viable, culturally relevant, and an integral part of great urban development—an approach that has had a lasting impact on Boston.