‘Why is that there?’
Fall 2024
Prof. James Graham
written for 4522: Essaying Architecture
Tasked with engaging with an unknown, using a child-like ferocity of questioning, this essay grew out of a curiosity of a daily walk and found its way toward surveying.
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Fall 2024
Prof. James Graham
written for 4522: Essaying Architecture
Tasked with engaging with an unknown, using a child-like ferocity of questioning, this essay grew out of a curiosity of a daily walk and found its way toward surveying.
D G & A _ TRAVERSE POINT _ DO NOT DISTURB
A small, unassuming metal disc with a
nail through the middle. No more than a few inches in diameter and trod on
daily by Cambervillian residents on their daily commute. Scuffed and worn at
the edges by art school Doc Martens, moving dollies, bikes finding a path, and
northeastern winters, the disc has lost all of the sheen and crispness it
likely entered this street corner with, yet still it persists.
Walking city sidewalks you quickly note and then even quicker dismiss the myriad metal coverings that dot your path. Manhole covers, gas lines, water pipes, electrical access points, sewer grates, subway vents, and any number more of services all have visible metal lids, often leading to tunnels, meters, or shut-off valves interrupting the near-homogenous surface of pavement. Coming from a land of septic tanks, propane heating, and well water—where storm runoff is often handled from property to property differently and generally without underground solutions—I frequently find myself transfixed by the sheer number of punctures in the sidewalks of urban areas, minor evidences of the hidden near-intravenous connections that fuel modernity: the vast, interconnecting, twisting and turning networks and highways of pipes that snake beneath our feet every day, working to make our daily lives seamless. Touching us only through these brief, often ignored ferrous dots and the once-monthly pesky bills we set up for autopay.
This minor blip, another unassuming metal disc I catch myself stepping on or over—depending on the haste of my gait or current care for my mother’s back—carries none of this known weight. Easy to toss aside as another reason why Dig Safe is as simple as an 811 call or a marker to help avid yard excavators and DIY Dads avoid ruining hot showers for a city block. Yet, it isn’t that. Why, then, is this disc seemingly only there interfacing with the soles of shoes on their march to and from, static and persisting?
Traverse points surround us. Plotted rest stops on paper used in surveying; these points are the starts of vectors, vectors that make the whole property system knowable. Brief moments attached to angle directions written in degrees and lengths measured to the hundredths of a foot, boundary lines that define much of the contemporary world, delineating property lines. Starting at a “station” or a designated and delineated point, “traversing” quickly and efficiently lays out the extent of place, drawing lines through a list of directions. “Traverses” can be open, defining a single stark boundary, closed, laying out an area, or compound, some combination of the previous two. A permanent traverse point then is a formerly brief moment at the edges of property, made unrelenting, a station, the point from which the rest of the city can be drawn.
Strangely, this small dot should not be there. D G & A; Donaldson, Garrett and Associates, a surveying company based in Macon, GA, and Charlotte, NC, marked this small section of Massachusetts sidewalk, considerably surely far outside their typical purview. It was most likely placed for a 1994 deed redrawing of an eight-unit apartment complex straddling the corners of Kirkland and Trowbridge Streets. The surveying was requested by Jack and Bessie C Savenor of the Savenor Butcher Shop, just a block away, upon establishing the Savenor Properties, LTD. The lot then had to be re-drawn officially for their new business records, as they transferred their personal holdings to the newly-designated company. The surveyors defined the property as starting at this unassuming metal dot and running “north 83 degrees 47 minutes and 43 seconds east one hundred and thirty-three and 18/100 feet” to the edge of the property “now or formerly” of Emmanuel Tripodakis. West until the property “now or formerly” of Michael Dequeen, denoting exact measurements and temporal neighborhood property holdings. The 1920s brick apartment remained visibly unchanged, but an important invisible change had occurred. The domain of the three-story complex had been made static, precisely measured to within an eighth of an inch.
Each day, I walk down Washington Street from my Somerville home as it turns to Kirkland Street, bridging the city line into Cambridge, and politely step by this small yet powerful dot. In the brief three years I have made this daily commute I have seen a lot of change to the landscape. Much of the sidewalks of even a year ago have been redone with the inclusion of bike paths, following Cambridge’s 2020 and Somerville’s 2023 Bicycle Network Plans. The once-weathered dark grey sidewalks become uneven dirt paths overnight, or more truthfully, over many, many nights. Littered with orange cones and now much more noticeable metal discs become poles protruding like small boulders to be dodged during your trek up and down this dusty river. These shifting and variable dirt tributaries of city life then, yet again seemingly overnight, become chalky, smooth, near white sidewalks. New, pristine, without years of shuffling feet and treacherous winters, the gas and water markers are now once again easily forgotten beauty marks dotting their way through your daily commute. All this change is meaningless to this small metal sentinel. Minor adjustments to the vectors it originates and even smaller flashes of time in its persisting watch of the boundaries of the city.
Walking city sidewalks you quickly note and then even quicker dismiss the myriad metal coverings that dot your path. Manhole covers, gas lines, water pipes, electrical access points, sewer grates, subway vents, and any number more of services all have visible metal lids, often leading to tunnels, meters, or shut-off valves interrupting the near-homogenous surface of pavement. Coming from a land of septic tanks, propane heating, and well water—where storm runoff is often handled from property to property differently and generally without underground solutions—I frequently find myself transfixed by the sheer number of punctures in the sidewalks of urban areas, minor evidences of the hidden near-intravenous connections that fuel modernity: the vast, interconnecting, twisting and turning networks and highways of pipes that snake beneath our feet every day, working to make our daily lives seamless. Touching us only through these brief, often ignored ferrous dots and the once-monthly pesky bills we set up for autopay.
This minor blip, another unassuming metal disc I catch myself stepping on or over—depending on the haste of my gait or current care for my mother’s back—carries none of this known weight. Easy to toss aside as another reason why Dig Safe is as simple as an 811 call or a marker to help avid yard excavators and DIY Dads avoid ruining hot showers for a city block. Yet, it isn’t that. Why, then, is this disc seemingly only there interfacing with the soles of shoes on their march to and from, static and persisting?
Traverse points surround us. Plotted rest stops on paper used in surveying; these points are the starts of vectors, vectors that make the whole property system knowable. Brief moments attached to angle directions written in degrees and lengths measured to the hundredths of a foot, boundary lines that define much of the contemporary world, delineating property lines. Starting at a “station” or a designated and delineated point, “traversing” quickly and efficiently lays out the extent of place, drawing lines through a list of directions. “Traverses” can be open, defining a single stark boundary, closed, laying out an area, or compound, some combination of the previous two. A permanent traverse point then is a formerly brief moment at the edges of property, made unrelenting, a station, the point from which the rest of the city can be drawn.
Strangely, this small dot should not be there. D G & A; Donaldson, Garrett and Associates, a surveying company based in Macon, GA, and Charlotte, NC, marked this small section of Massachusetts sidewalk, considerably surely far outside their typical purview. It was most likely placed for a 1994 deed redrawing of an eight-unit apartment complex straddling the corners of Kirkland and Trowbridge Streets. The surveying was requested by Jack and Bessie C Savenor of the Savenor Butcher Shop, just a block away, upon establishing the Savenor Properties, LTD. The lot then had to be re-drawn officially for their new business records, as they transferred their personal holdings to the newly-designated company. The surveyors defined the property as starting at this unassuming metal dot and running “north 83 degrees 47 minutes and 43 seconds east one hundred and thirty-three and 18/100 feet” to the edge of the property “now or formerly” of Emmanuel Tripodakis. West until the property “now or formerly” of Michael Dequeen, denoting exact measurements and temporal neighborhood property holdings. The 1920s brick apartment remained visibly unchanged, but an important invisible change had occurred. The domain of the three-story complex had been made static, precisely measured to within an eighth of an inch.
Each day, I walk down Washington Street from my Somerville home as it turns to Kirkland Street, bridging the city line into Cambridge, and politely step by this small yet powerful dot. In the brief three years I have made this daily commute I have seen a lot of change to the landscape. Much of the sidewalks of even a year ago have been redone with the inclusion of bike paths, following Cambridge’s 2020 and Somerville’s 2023 Bicycle Network Plans. The once-weathered dark grey sidewalks become uneven dirt paths overnight, or more truthfully, over many, many nights. Littered with orange cones and now much more noticeable metal discs become poles protruding like small boulders to be dodged during your trek up and down this dusty river. These shifting and variable dirt tributaries of city life then, yet again seemingly overnight, become chalky, smooth, near white sidewalks. New, pristine, without years of shuffling feet and treacherous winters, the gas and water markers are now once again easily forgotten beauty marks dotting their way through your daily commute. All this change is meaningless to this small metal sentinel. Minor adjustments to the vectors it originates and even smaller flashes of time in its persisting watch of the boundaries of the city.
D G & A _ TRAVERSE POINT _ DO NOT DISTURB