A landmark along the Southeast Expressway, the Pine Street Inn, the city's largest homeless shelter, originally served as the headquarters for the Boston Fire Department. Edmund March Wheelwright, as Boston city architect, borrowed the image of the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence (using the 156-foot-high tower for the drying of fire hoses) for this yellow brick design. CBT's conversion of the fire headquarters and three adjacent buildings for the Pine Street Inn provided six floors of space for administration, dining, cooking and education and sleeping quarters for three hundred men and fifty women. The towered palazzo provides a powerful symbol for a network of more than twenty-five social service locations throughout Greater Boston.