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I recommend that Leavenworth businesses add some interest to the city’s sidewalks in the shopping district by embedding bronze disks or plates in the sidewalks that provide information about our historic figures. You can see examples of this when you walk around the Legends shopping area.
We have plenty of nationally significant historic figures that we could memorialize with 18-inch diameter disks, for example. What makes the concept attractive to me is that it could provide some sidewalk entertainment for people walking down our streets and that potential for entertainment could be capitalized on by attracting people to the downtown to actually walk on the sidewalks past our stores.
Anything that attracts people to the shopping district has got to be a good thing. Personally, I think that each business could vie for a disk in front of their establishment. I believe that they would even work with the artist to insure that the disk was attractive and that they would take care to brush sand or dirt from the disk as they would surely need to be kept cleaned during the year.
I observed a team of workers brushing and cleaning the disks at the Legends. It consisted mainly of removing the sand that would accumulate from snow removal efforts during the winter. Most grit could probably be removed with a dirt vac and with a little assistance from some brushing if it was really stuck.
It would depend on who you would want to memorialize, but I’ll bet that there must be at least a dozen persons that deserve the honor. There are also some businesses themselves that have been around so long that they, too, deserve a disk. For example, the Corner Pharmacy, Davis Funeral Home, and Gronis Hardware have been around for a long time. So has the Leavenworth Times and Biringers.
There is absolutely nothing historic about the Legends, so they have a disk about the discovery of helium, for example. In Ithaca, New York, they have a series of disks that represent the planetary system and the disks are placed throughout the downtown shopping district so that you have to search for them, usually starting at the one representing the central sun.
This is not rocket science. There probably should be a standard size and shape for the disks and they should all be vetted to insure that they are worthy of being embedded in concrete. One of my artist friends uses a foundry in Lawrence, so it is not a long distance problem for shipping the cast disks.
The most difficult problem is the cutting of the concrete and embedding the disks so that they are permanently attached and vandal proof. The disks at the Legends are walked on all the time and the only affect is to keep them shiny.
Maybe people who have lived here for several generations know who the personalities are in Leavenworth, but for most of us, having bronze reminders in the downtown sidewalks might be a refreshing reason to visit the downtown more often.
Matt Nowak works as a natural resources manager.
I recommend that Leavenworth businesses add some interest to the city’s sidewalks in the shopping district by embedding bronze disks or plates in the sidewalks that provide information about our historic figures. You can see examples of this when you walk around the Legends shopping area.
We have plenty of nationally significant historic figures that we could memorialize with 18-inch diameter disks, for example. What makes the concept attractive to me is that it could provide some sidewalk entertainment for people walking down our streets and that potential for entertainment could be capitalized on by attracting people to the downtown to actually walk on the sidewalks past our stores.
Anything that attracts people to the shopping district has got to be a good thing. Personally, I think that each business could vie for a disk in front of their establishment. I believe that they would even work with the artist to insure that the disk was attractive and that they would take care to brush sand or dirt from the disk as they would surely need to be kept cleaned during the year.
I observed a team of workers brushing and cleaning the disks at the Legends. It consisted mainly of removing the sand that would accumulate from snow removal efforts during the winter. Most grit could probably be removed with a dirt vac and with a little assistance from some brushing if it was really stuck.
It would depend on who you would want to memorialize, but I’ll bet that there must be at least a dozen persons that deserve the honor. There are also some businesses themselves that have been around so long that they, too, deserve a disk. For example, the Corner Pharmacy, Davis Funeral Home, and Gronis Hardware have been around for a long time. So has the Leavenworth Times and Biringers.
There is absolutely nothing historic about the Legends, so they have a disk about the discovery of helium, for example. In Ithaca, New York, they have a series of disks that represent the planetary system and the disks are placed throughout the downtown shopping district so that you have to search for them, usually starting at the one representing the central sun.
This is not rocket science. There probably should be a standard size and shape for the disks and they should all be vetted to insure that they are worthy of being embedded in concrete. One of my artist friends uses a foundry in Lawrence, so it is not a long distance problem for shipping the cast disks.
The most difficult problem is the cutting of the concrete and embedding the disks so that they are permanently attached and vandal proof. The disks at the Legends are walked on all the time and the only affect is to keep them shiny.
Maybe people who have lived here for several generations know who the personalities are in Leavenworth, but for most of us, having bronze reminders in the downtown sidewalks might be a refreshing reason to visit the downtown more often.
Matt Nowak works as a natural resources manager.
