Graceful
Here are a few photos captured on a walk around Mac-Groveland this noon: three sidewalk poems, several stop-sign posts that are more beautiful than they need to be, and a reminder of where stormwater ends up.
This is a beautiful neighborhood to walk in, especially in the high summer when everyone’s gardens are showing to best advantage. The public art and public-spirited stencils add another measure of delight.
For the poems and the stop-sign posts, it turns out, we can thank an organization called Public Art St. Paul, which dates back to 1987. Its City Artist arm, now celebrating its 10th anniversary, conceived the sidewalk poetry project in 2007 (the poems were written by St. Paul residents and selected in contests) and the stop-sign beautification in 2013. (Thanks to Linda for the factual corrections.) PASP gets funding from the City and from a who’s-who of charitable foundations, among others.
The storm drain stenciling is organized by the Friends of the Mississippi River. It makes much more visible a notice that is embossed into the iron of the drains themselves, but that mostly goes unnoticed — I was oblivious to this message in the metal until I blew up the photo above. Here is the close-up:
Bonus: Here is the text of those three sidewalk poems, which are a little hard to read in my iPhone photos.
How perfectly lovely. Yes, Mac-Groveland is indeed an amazing wonderful place to live.
I notice the same thing on my walks. 🙂 I live in Highland and we don’t have the fancy stop signs.
St. Paul is a gorgeous walking city. If you’ll walk the mile or so down to the Mississippi it only gets better!
Incidentally, my husband is from Boston (Dedham, actually), and shares your view that Midwestern pizza is simply a different animal. 14 years into his residency here, his favorite “standard” pizza – so, not Chicago-style, Neapolitan, wood-fired, etc. – is Pizza Luce on Selby.
Welcome to the neighborhood!
Kelly, thanks for the recommendation of Pizza Luce. That is the second one on this blog and it getting to be high time my wife and I tried it out!
We haven’t headed west on foot yet. Soon though.
Julie, I have seen those stop signs in several city neighborhoods. This timeline from the Public Art St. Paul site indicates that the stop-sign beautification project began in 2013 and is ongoing. So there’s hope for Highland yet.
I am enjoying your blog! Quick note of clarification about Public Art Saint Paul (PASP). The organization was actually founded in 1987 and the founding director, Christine Podas-Larson, just retired the end of June. The sidewalk poems was a project initiated by Marcus Young, one of the City Artists. The City Artist arm of PASP was been in existence for the past 10 years. PASP is a fabulous organization and there are two stone sculptures in the Highland Park neighborhood that were a result of MN Rocks!, an international stone carving symposium that was held on the front lawn of Saint Paul College.
Thank you Linda, and glad you’re enjoying! I will make that correction in the post. I have installed Scott Carpenter’s Post Revision Display plugin, and will be tweaking its display properties, so visitors will be able to see exactly what changed in the post and when.
[2015-08-24] Apologies, that plugin has various undesired side effects. I have disabled it.
Pizza Luce also has a killer tiramisu. I always skip one piece of pizza for room for dessert. I have been known to stop in and just grab dessert…lol
Good tip, thanks Patti! We’ll try to leave room.