Art hiding in plain sight in DC

Featured on wusa9.com

There's a good chance you've walked by a piece of art without a second glance. Whether it's on your daily commute, a jog around the neighborhood, or on the way to a friend's house on a Friday night, these little installations seem to fade into the background.

Starting in the 1860's, police and fire call boxes were installed throughout Washington, D.C. The concept is simple enough: police with a special key would open them while walking their beats and flip a switch, indicating there were no incidents at the time. For over 100 years they stood, heavy metal boxes on heavy metal posts on Washington's street corners.

But then came the 1970's and a new technology that made the boxes obsolete: the 9-1-1 emergency call system. It was a quick death, but more than 1,000 of the solid metal poles still remain throughout the city. The electronic components were removed by 1995, but the posts were still vulnerable to vandalism and expensive to remove.

Around the turn of the century, an initiative named Art on Call was started. Over the next few years, the city located and identified boxes for refurbishment. According to Cultural Tourism DC, over 1100 have been found, and 700 have been stripped and primed for their next tour of duty: art installations.

Dotting the streets of the city are miniature bits of art by local artists. Some are small brass figurines, others provide a bit of information about architecture or commerce in the area.

There is currently no exhaustive map of every box in the city. The 60 boxes listed here comprise the most thorough map to date.

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