History behind this metal ‘street art’
Every week, hundreds of people going in and out of busy San Pedro Square Market pass a curious metal structure sitting across St. John Street that looks something like a giant, old birdcage. Closer inspection reveals an old-fashioned accordion gate on one side, but few other clues.
I’d seen it for years — it had been in the parking lot that used to bisect San Pedro Square — and wondered what it was. An incomprehensible piece of street art making a statement on the cages society has broken out of? Embedded in a chunk of concrete, I thought it might have been excavated at some point or maybe leftover from a construction project.
I turned to former San Jose Mayor Tom McEnery, knower of all things San Pedro Square, who had the answer because the piece belongs to him.
It’s an elevator salvaged from St. Joseph School, which once stood at Locust Street and Park Avenue, part of a largely Italian and Catholic community in downtown San Jose. The school, along with a few other buildings including Holy Family Church, survived the first wave of redevelopment in the area in 1968. It remained in operation until 1987 when it was closed, and its three buildings were razed in 1992, closing a chapter of the city’s history.
Today, Adobe’s towers — a major symbol of downtown’s renaissance — stand on the school’s former site.
McEnery went to the school — which already was old when he got there — before continuing his education at Bellarmine College Prep and Santa Clara University. He kept the piece of history near his office at San Pedro Square and had it moved near the Fallon House when construction started on the Modera apartment building on that lot.
The elevator’s future is uncertain. McEnery says he’d like to do something special with it as a tribute to his school, but he hasn’t figured out exactly what that would be yet.
WINNING IDEAS >> Four arts groups walked away with $10,000 unrestricted grants from SV Creates’ X Factor Arts Awards , a “Shark Tank”-style competition held this month. SVCreates Associate Director Alexandra Urbanowski said the competition was fierce among the nine finalists that had to give seven-minute pitches to a panel of judges.
The four winners are: Ray Furuta and Chamber Music Silicon Valley, which is trying to amplify its shows by creating a night club environment with happy hours and full bars; Teatro Visión, which completed a string of interviews with seniors and has playwright Cristal Gonzalez writing a series of one-minute plays based on them; San Jose’s Institute of Contemporary Art and Art Hangs, four pop-up art experiences in bars and cafes in the SoFA district; and Pow! Wow! San Jose, the weeklong art and music festival that just concluded Sunday and added nearly two dozen new murals to the city.
“It is interesting to note that the four selected projects will take the arts out into the community— meeting potential arts audiences in places where local residents frequent, taking arts out of traditional venues and into bars, clubs, street fairs, and neighborhoods. Perhaps it’s the year of ‘taking arts to the streets?’ Urbanowski said.