Category: public space

Community meetings

Once upon a time the public stage was an open place to see and be seen
Sometime the being seen was without a particular message. Maybe one’s presence expressed support? Maybe it expressed a watchfulness.
LanCoVa BOS
There is information available from body language and the context in which it is thrown down
signs
There are means, within the physical space, even if it is not your turn to be heard to be heard.

Now there are all forms of electronic meetings. Have they increased accessibility? Have they increased effective citizen participation in governance?

Rappahannock Wharf

east high oblique view
8. RAPPAHANNOCK WHARF, LLC, #20-0920 Requests authorization to re-develop a deteriorated commercial wharf to include removal of a failed timber bulkhead and concrete slab, installation of a 70-foot long quarry stone and rubble breakwater with associated clean sand fill and wetland plants to create a living shoreline…
452 linear feet of timber replacement bulkhead, a 16-foot wide gravel boat ramp with flanking timber jetties, a 32-foot long timber wave screen, repair of one 12-foot wide pier, replacement of two (2) other piers at 8-feet wide…
herons's favorite shore
and installation of 205 linear feet of quarry stone riprap revetment to create a commercial marine construction facility base of operation on Town Creek at the end of Callis Road in Lancaster County. The project is protested by an adjoining property owner and another individual in the area.

symbols

Kids love the lions, lions love kids. Bite sized.

Called “New York’s most lovable public sculpture” by architecture critic Paul Goldberger, the Lions have witnessed countless parades and been adorned with holly wreaths during the winter holidays and magnificent floral wreaths in springtime. They have been bedecked in top hats, graduation caps, Mets and Yankee caps, and more. They have been photographed alongside countless tourists, replicated as bookends, caricatured in cartoons, and illustrated in numerous children’s books. One even served as the hiding place for the cowardly lion in the motion picture The Wiz.

According to Henry Hope Reed in his book, The New York Public Library, about the architecture of  the Fifth Avenue building, the sculptor Edward Clark Potter obtained the commission for the lions on the recommendation of Augustus Saint-Gaudens, one of America’s foremost sculptors. Potter was paid $8,000 for the modeling, and the Piccirilli Brothers executed the carving for $5,000, using pink Tennessee marble. After enduring almost a century of weather and pollution, in 2004 the lions were professionally cleaned and restored.  

Their nicknames have changed over the decades. First they were called Leo Astor and Leo Lenox, after The New York Public Library founders John Jacob Astor and James Lenox. Later, they were known as Lady Astor and Lord Lenox (even though they are both male lions). During the 1930s, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia named them Patience and Fortitude, for the qualities he felt New Yorkers would need to survive the economic depression. These names have stood the test of time: Patience still guards the south side of the Library’s steps and Fortitude sits unwaveringly to the north.–New York Public Library