Manhole Covers

"This covers the part of the world which is underfoot, and might be the way that a lot of people find most immediately rewarding – to start to look at an ordinary block in a way they haven’t before. For the most part, even in New York where a lot of old manholes have been replaced and covered with resin, there are still many, many beautiful examples of 19th century ironwork that we drive or walk over. And this book is a picture history of a number of these covers. The Melnicks were some of the first to publish images of metal covers as though they were art. I think the covers really are beautiful and it is surprising that there will still be millions of people walking around in cities who haven’t bothered to look at these covers, which have things on them like a radiating sun pattern, or to wonder about the initials that represent the iron forger or the company which commissioned the making of the manhole. And so from this book you can remember to walk down your block, gaze at what’s underfoot and enjoy that. Yes, which are easily identifiable as soon as you have an eye for it. The phone lines and the electrical lines are all going to be represented by different covers. There probably are collectors of these covers, too. And there was a point at which, unlike trainspotting, people were often stealing these manholes and taking them away to have at home or be sold as scrap."

"Many of us are into the mundane and the overlooked. Normally, somebody would say, “Why are you even bothering to photograph that?” Well, like the Melnick’s with their manhole covers, I was interested in the coaling towers’ design elements. And perhaps like me, they may have also have been curious about the various firms that manufactured them. In that light, from a design standpoint, I’ve been researching two towers—one in Wilmington, Delaware, another in Newport News, Virginia, both built in the 1930s. You probably know of Raymond Loewy, one of the chief industrial designers of that era, very much in the ‘streamline moderne’ camp. Those two towers have that streamlined look. “Is this an economy that leaves any lasting physical traces?” As far as the firms that made them, both towers were built by Roberts and Schaefer, one of three major concerns in Chicago (the other two companies building coaling towers were Fairbanks-Morse and Ogle). Hankey is developing a line of inquiry that suggests members of the Chicago School of Architecture perhaps socialized with the in-house industrial designers that worked at R&S, F-M or Ogle—you know, they went out and had drinks together—so an intermixing and exchange of ideas might have occurred. We may never know if that’s true unless we get into corporate history, but someone was designing with aesthetics in mind at those industrial firms, thinking about the streamlined looks that defined the era. The Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad had their headquarters in Cleveland, and the architectural firm of Garfield, Harris, Robinson and Schaefer was involved in their industrial design. They designed two incredibly streamlined towers—one at Clifton Forge, Virginia and the other at Hinton, West Virginia—that were even bigger than the ones in my book. Unfortunately, those have been demolished. But the same firm likely designed the one at Newport News. Yes, I believe they can. They have an anonymous, everyday, functional quality that perhaps puts them in the realm of the vernacular depending on how one looks at them. The coaling towers weren’t designed as art, but they come in varied shapes and sizes with a sculptural presence. And on some level, could be considered or defined as “high art.” All industrial artifacts speak to a societies history or it priorities which makes them have value. In my estimation a piece of folk or vernacular art can also reach those heights of consideration. All to say: these categories all have art value to me. I consider the coaling towers pieces of art. They’ll probably take a cue from generic warehouses or strip malls—boxy, hidden in plain sight, no logos. The buildings are designed to disappear, but it also raises the question of land use. What’s going to happen to all this industrial land not used? In Buffalo and some places I’ve seen gentrification—former industrial buildings becoming coffee bars, artist lofts, high-end condominiums. But there are a lot of brownfield sites that need remediation. So it’s a toss-up as to how these landscapes will unfold and develop in the future. I’ve been reading about these data centers and the amount of electricity and resources they consume. Everything is becoming miniaturized—we’ve gone from coaling towers to a switch on a diesel locomotive, and now tremendous energy consumption to power an abstract information economy that sits in the palm of your hand. Is this an economy that leaves any lasting physical traces? Sure. A few last things about the towers themselves: the early ones were made of wood—long ramps that took up a lot of space and weren’t fire retardant, so many burned down. The evolution to concrete is an interesting industrial progression. And certainly left lasting traces unlike the wooden ones. Some of the towers are also far from uniform. You notice striations in color on some of their surfaces—evidence of construction with slip forms that moved up as the concrete was poured in stages, and depending on temperature and environmental conditions at the time of the pour, each layer took on a slightly different coloration. The coaling tower at Reevesville, Illinois, in the book is a prime example. This is more evident in the boxy shapes than the cylindrical ones. And why did they evolve from boxes to cylinders? Cylindrically, it was easier to handle coal. Internal pressures were more evenly spread. These were gravity-fed, so with a box you’d have coal stuck in corners. The worker was down there with a shovel moving it toward the chutes. Who knows? It’s possible that in 100 or 200 years we will find them overgrown with weeds, waiting to be discovered by a futuristic Indiana Jones. Industrial archeology may have even greater resonance in centuries to come."