The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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I was in a courthouse recently, one built one hundred years ago. Marble stairs, oak banisters, historical murals, mosaics, paintings, stained glass windows, monumental columns… a temple, really, to the abstract notion of justice and laws. We used to erect our public edifices with more than concrete and mortar —- we built them with the idea that they represented our values, our hopes and our optimism for a grandiose future. Great societies do this. Their architecture and their art reflect this confidence in what they believe, in what they accomplished, in what they still hope to achieve and pass down to the next generations.

Nowadays I see libraries in dead storefronts, I see city halls in re-imagined office buildings, I see schools that are half trailers. Maybe this is fiscal frugality writ large. But I worry this is nothing more than a shrinking vision of the future, a hardening of societal pessimism or worse, a loss of hope that the path ahead leads to better times.

I put art in public buildings, a latter day Leonardo in an era where grand statements are looked at with suspicion or outright disdain. At a recent public discussion on our plans for a new fire station headquarters, the fire commissioners were concerned the building might look to the the taxpayers a bit, oh, too opulent. Better to cut out any amenities, any architectural flourishes and certainly any art. Wouldn’t want to incur the wrath of an overburdened citizenry.

God forbid! Better to play it safe, shrink down the vision, quash the aesthetic, go bare bones. Forget any archaic notion of the inspirational, abandon all pretense of grandeur, huddle in the 60 watt darkness of a wasting vision. The empty Wal-Marts can be our schools, abandoned Safeways can be outfitted as City Halls and the rest, well, like our sheriff’s station, drag in a pre-fab box. The taxpayer is supreme and they need the savings for Lotto and the flag they fly out in the lawn rain or shine, puerile patriots to the outdated fiction of a now plasticized Rome.

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