A digital “Twitter wall” flashes trending neighborhood topics inside the lobby of a new high-rise in the theater district. A freshly built luxury building across town lures affluent young professionals with sunset yoga and hip-hop parties on the pool deck. Downtown, one of San Francisco’s best known restaurateurs, Michael Mina, will craft a new entree every month for residents of a sleek condo tower. And homeowners at a glass skyscraper set to open in 2018 will be able to sip cocktails in private “sky cabanas” overlooking a rooftop pool. They may need to look out the cabanas’ glass walls to remember what city they’re in—Boston.

Boston—a city with a Puritan back story and an ingrained suspicion of glitz, where a well-preserved Back Bay townhouse has long been the gold standard of top-tier real estate—is embracing the designer high rise. Shiny residential towers are sprouting up across Beantown’s once drab and neglected precincts, emblems of Boston’s boom and its growth as a bigger, more international city.

“I love the historic aspect of Boston, but the old brownstones are not for me,” said Wayne Adams, 31, a software developer and Michigan transplant. After a computer-simulated house tour, he recently paid $1.13 million for a 24th-floor one-bedroom at Pierce Boston, a 30-story geometric glass tower now rising near Fenway Park that will open in 2018.

As a condo owner, he will have access to a private sky deck with an outdoor kitchen and fireplace, and a glass-floored dining room. For an additional $300,000 or so, he can buy one of the building’s 12 private rooftop cabanas.

To some longtime locals, these glassy high-rises might look like they belong in the opening credits of “Miami Vice,” not the home of Paul Revere. But Boston is moving into a dynamic new chapter in its long history.