Look Down Series: Curb Your Enthusiasm

There may be nothing more prosaic than a curb, but I have an attachment to this neglected species.  In the late 1980s, while living in Buffalo in a house on one of Frederick Law Olmsted's grand thoroughfares, I spent a good part of two summers with hoe, shovel, weedwhacker and wheelbarrow, engaged in a sweaty, Sisyphusian act of liberation, cleaning the dirt and weeds from the the handsome curbs on Chapin, Bidwell, and Lincoln Parkways.  We called this activity "curbing." 



New Orleans Curb

 I've had some moderate interest in curbs ever since, at least in the cities I know well.  In New Orleans, key portions of the concrete curbs--at intersections and at the ends of median strips--are faced with iron, apparently to prevent decay and erosion in an area that some say is prone to flooding.  If you know the city, the one at left is on Ursuline, just north of Broad.  In St. Bernard Parish, to the east of the city, the curbs are so sharply cut and so high--even at driveway entrances--that caution is required to avoid damage to your car.







Rome Curb

Rome (yes, finally) is graced by substantial curbs of whitish stone (left), a building material widely available in the surrounding countryside.  And almost everywhere, and in one of my favorite touches, sections of curb are joined using a special, rounded cut (top and at right) that embeds one section of curb into another--a bit like assembling sections of a toy train track.

So next time, look down--and give those curbs some respect!
Bill

Look Down Series: EUR's Manhole Covers



This cover reads, "Esposizone Universale E.42"  (Universal Exposition, E (Esposizione) [1942]



E..42 (and lower right,, Rome Foundry)



GAS, in modernist lettering

   If you've been with us for awhile, you know we've entertained you before with Rome's cool manhole covers.  While many of that earlier series were found on the streets and sidewalks of the Piazza Bologna area, the current offerings, no less evocative of the city's 20th-century past, come from EUR, the pompously modernistic quartiere to the south of the center (on the Metro).  The zone is named for the Esposizione Universale di Roma (EUR, Universal Exposition of Rome), built by the Fascist regime in the late 1930s and early 1940s, and scheduled to open in 1942, the 20th anniversary of the Fascist March on Rome.  The war came up the peninsula, the expo never took place, and EUR was used in 1943 and 1944 as a staging area for the occupying German army, after Italy surrendered to the allies.  But much of the construction had been completed, including the infrastructure--and including these nifty manhole covers.
Bill

Note the Latinate "U" in EUR and tips of Bill's shoes