Kiosk as Art: NO!

            A creative and welcome idea to lessen the impact of panhandling downtown shouldn’t be sidelined as it has been.

            This plan is to install a giving kiosk is as an alternative to donating to panhandlers. It will be completely privately financed. It won’t cost taxpayers a penny and should relieve the popularly perceived image of beggars harming the aura of
Chapel Hill’s public shopping area.

             An anonymous donor has offered to pay the $17,000 construction cost of building and installing this small sidewalk structure downtown. As tried and used elsewhere in similar circumstances, it offers people the option to contribute to designated charities instead of enabling panhandlers.            The Chapel Hill Town Council recently considered this proposal, seemed to like it, and commissioned a local artist to submit a design. The resulting design by Callie Warner shows a securely- built rectangular structure, simply roofed and with slots for contributions. It is purely a functional kiosk, both in design and appearance.

             As all too often happens when something is caught in the maw of bureaucracy, the kiosk idea has been shoved aside ‘til it can be considered as art, rather than as a functional structure. It now awaits a decision — yet-to-be considered or approved – as to whether it is art instead of a simple structure for its intended purpose. Until then there’ll be no giving kiosk and no donation of it or to it.

           This isn’t a case of defining art. This simply-conceived kiosk structure is not art in appearance nor purpose. It may help resolve a long-standing problem of public perception. Such a kiosk has a history of doing so elsewhere.

             We in this early 21^st century call ourselves a civilized and enlightened society, but we complicate our lives unmercifully. This is a prime instance of it.

             Let’s get on with the obvious solution, build the giving kiosk and see if it meets its purpose. 

Methodist Steeple: ‘One Foot Higher?’

               The 10-level scaffolding lately removed from the spire of Chapel Hill’s University United Methodist Church recalls a perhaps apocryphal story from the original construction of the 80-year- local landmark building.

            At 186 feet from ground to the weathervane on top, it’s the second tallest structure in town. (Tallest is the OWASA water tank on Manning Drive – 195 feet).  When plans for the present church were discussed, according to this anecdote, there was debate on how high the steeple should be. Some felt it was too tall, as designed by architect James Gamble Rogers. There was a split vote in favor of the architect’s proposal. The dissent was ended with the understanding that it would to be one foot higher than those on the nearby new Presbyterian (116 feet) and Episcopal (111 feet) church buildings.              The projected $230,000 cost of the colonial-style church came principally from Methodist sources across the state, following a speaking tour by The Rev. Walter Patten, minister of the church.

            H.D. Carter of Chapel Hill, draftsman for the architect, reported in a 1925
Chapel Hill Weekly article that the new building was “one of the most pleasant examples of a colonial church in the state.” He noted that the steeple ball just below the weather vane was 20 inches in diameter – “about the same as a cement barrel head.” The vane itself, he wrote, was 5.5 feet ling and engraved with the compass directional letters N-E-W-S – a legend scarcely visible to the naked eye from the sidewalk below.                    The original church sanctuary, as it is yet today, has a seating capacity of 776, including a balcony for 158, deemed still adequate for the congregation of 1,800-plus.  Incidentally, the 530-pound church bell, given by philanthropist Julian Shakespeare Carr, came from the previous 1889 church building on the same site.

Truly the coolest place

        These early sultry summer days bring to my nostalgic mind the coolest experience I’ve ever had. –I mean wonderfully, comfortably cool, and not in the contemporary hip sense of something that’s quite pleasant or enjoyable. 

         One facet of cool way back in those pre-air conditioning days was to use one of the cherished hand-powered fans that were imprinted and distributed by funeral hones. Even better, about 75 years ago, was to cool off with an electric fan. Just coming into vogue, they were a great and satisfactory asset to summer comfort. 

         As kids in the neighborhood we also enjoyed cool by chipping off a piece of ice from the family ice box. Better still was to run behind the horse-drawn ice wagon and catch a sliver when the ice man stopped to cut off a piece for home delivery from the big chunks he was hauling. 

         Of all these experiences, though, the best, the most satisfying was to help replenish the big walk-in ice box at the
Durham YMCA summer camp, then located in the new Umstead
State Park.           As a junior counselor there one of my jobs was to ride with the pick-up truck into Durham once a week to bring back six 300-pound slabs of ice for the mess hall walk-in ice box. The big boys would haul these up by block and tackle, one at a time, into the ice cavity above the food storage box. My job was to skid the blocks around on the slats to their location. This simple cooling system worked fine.              

        On any typical sultry summer day I knew I had, literally, the coolest job of anybody anywhere, and I loved it.       

          The organized camps at Umstead Park now have regular electric refrigerators, and probably some electric-powered air conditioned facilities.

          But nobody there will ever be as refreshingly cool as I was way back then. 

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