{"id":305856,"date":"2021-07-22T22:37:56","date_gmt":"2021-07-22T19:37:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/montreal-might-have-canadas-most-beautiful-manhole-covers\/"},"modified":"2021-07-22T22:37:56","modified_gmt":"2021-07-22T19:37:56","slug":"montreal-might-have-canadas-most-beautiful-manhole-covers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/montreal-might-have-canadas-most-beautiful-manhole-covers\/","title":{"rendered":"#Montreal might have Canada’s most beautiful manhole covers"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Montreal might have Canada’s most beautiful manhole covers<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n The city has transformed the most utilitarian and overlooked element of the urban landscape into an elegant piece of design that will beautify the streets for decades to come\n <\/div>\n
\n There are two versions of this story.<\/p>\n

The straightforward one is that Montreal recently unveiled a new design for the city\u2019s manhole covers, transforming that most utilitarian and (literally) overlooked element of the urban landscape into something that resembles a heraldic shield that might have adorned the vaults of a medieval cathedral.<\/p>\n

The old cover \u201cwas really boring,\u201d says Sylvain Ouellet, a city councillor and vice-chair of the city\u2019s executive committee. \u201cIt was mainly made for a utilitarian perspective, so there was absolutely no design. The beauty was not there.\u201d<\/p>\n

The new one features stylized, intertwined botanical elements that nod to the city\u2019s history and flag: a fleur-de-lys representing the French, a rose for the English, a Scottish thistle, an Irish shamrock and a white pine for the local Indigenous communities, all designed by artist Luc Melanson. It is genuinely beautiful\u2014imbued with meaning, at once spare and intricate.<\/p>\n

The idea originated in the lead-up to the city\u2019s 375th anniversary celebration in 2017, Ouellet says, sparked in part by the example of other cities such as Cologne, Germany, and Boston that have paid attention to the aesthetics of their utility covers. The idea was to mark Montreal\u2019s anniversary by designing something that would become a visible legacy in the city, but nothing was ready in time for that milestone.<\/p>\n

Rather, the new covers began to pop up across Montreal last year, but the city didn\u2019t officially introduce the new one until early June 2021. It cost $25,000 to develop the design and $12,000 to create the foundry mould, though after those start-up costs, the new covers will cost the same as the old ones: $300 each. The plan is to gradually install them across Montreal when it\u2019s time for replacement or new roads are built.<\/p>\n

\u201cManhole covers, their life expectancy is so long, we want to have a more classic design that is timeless,\u201d Ouellet says.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A worker installs a manhole cover in the city\u2019s Old Port (Photograph by Chlo\u00eb Ellingson)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Which brings us to the more existential version of this story, in which one of these hefty cast iron discs becomes a postcard from another era, or a reminder to live less like grown-ups and more like toddlers.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you were a time travel<\/a>ler back from 1875 into today\u2014to that very spot\u2014the streets look different, all the buildings hadn\u2019t been there before. The trees, if they\u2019re still left, they\u2019re much bigger,\u201d says Daniel Fireside, a self-declared\u2014with tongue firmly in cheek\u2014manhole cover influencer. \u201cThe one thing that would be familiar would be this manhole cover. It\u2019s this time capsule.\u201d<\/p>\n

Five years ago, he was meandering around his Somerville, Mass., neighbourhood when his toddler suddenly pointed at the ground and declared, \u201cABC.\u201d Fireside looked down and saw an iron grate inscribed with a G, which he figured indicated a gas line; then his son pointed to another nearby grate with different lettering. \u201cWith that sort of little kid\u2019s eye, where everything around you is new and interesting if you take a close enough look, I started realizing there was great variation in these objects I\u2019d walked by millions of times and never noticed,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Five thousand photos and countless hours of research later\u2014plus an online community built around his Twitter<\/a> and Instagram handles @IronCovers\u2014Fireside is the guy you call if you want to talk about manhole cover design, or why beautiful things that wave to us from the past or reach into the future matter. (\u201cAs I tell my mother, there are worse ways to get famous for photos on the internet,\u201d he says.)<\/p>\n

He\u2019s found a handful of covers in his hometown that contain mistakes\u2014a backwards 3, or three nails substituted for a missing N\u2014and he loves the long-ago humanity they suggest: someone rushing to get an order out the door thinking no one will notice, and along he comes 100 years later to do just that. \u201cI feel this weird connection to these craftspeople who were anonymously toiling away in these foundries and imbued these objects with artistic flourishes,\u201d he says. \u201cWhoever these people were are long gone, but we\u2019re all benefiting.\u201d<\/p>\n

The change to Fireside\u2019s daily experience of his world suggests a different way we could all be, and how more thoughtfully designed cities could help. It\u2019s what any yoga instructor or therapist would tell you about learning to be in the moment: be fully present and take in where you are, rather than bypassing that place and time to get where you\u2019re going.<\/p>\n

But it is the sheer longevity of manhole covers\u2014it\u2019s not uncommon for them to stay in place for a century or more\u2014that lends them a sort of immortal quality. \u201cThere is this trend of cities realizing that it\u2019s worth investing in these objects that will probably last longer in their existing form than any other thing they\u2019re going to create in the public space,\u201d Fireside says.<\/p>\n

Which is exactly what Montreal was aiming for in celebrating its big birthday. Inevitably, when Ouellet announced the new design on his councillor Facebook page, a few people asked why the city didn\u2019t spend that money filling potholes. \u201cWhat I responded to them is, \u2018Well, it costs exactly the same thing to create an ugly manhole or a beautiful manhole,\u2019 \u201d he says. \u201c \u2018So personally, I chose a beautiful one.\u2019 \u201d
\n<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n