What's Round, Weighs 250 Pounds ...

From PCJ Editor Wayne Senville:

What's round, weighs 250 pounds, and plays a vital role in our cities and towns? Want another hint? It can be found just about everywhere you walk or drive. If you haven't guessed (or peeked at the photos), I'm talking about the ubiquitous manhole cover.

Yet it's worth giving them a moment's thought. Consider that besides being functional parts of a city's infrastructure, they can also be works of art. Certainly that's the case throughout Japan, where cities have their own distinctive manhole cover designs, and in other countries as well.

The top two manhole covers above are from Japan. Photos of many more of the remarkable Japanese manhole covers can be viewed on Flickr. See also the blog post, Street Art & Railway Melodies of Japan. I took the photo of the cover on the left in Acre, Israel (north of Haifa).

Even in the U.S., people are recognzing that manhole covers can add a bit of "art" underfoot. Denver, Colorado's Lower Downtown Historic District uses a quite distinctive manhole cover design (below left). And consider this comment from Ketchum, Idaho: "How can we make art part of our infrastructure?" asked Claudia McCain, a member of the Wood River Arts Alliance ... "Manhole covers, sidewalks, grates -- they can be made more attractive, exciting and inviting." See "Ketchum's Creativity Creates a Stir" (Idaho Mountain Express, March 21, 2007).

But also consider that manhole covers and other street gratings have a long and proud heritage, dating back to the middle of the 1870s. You might have a part of the 19th century in your own city or town.

Take a look, for example, at this 1895 Sewer Dept. manhole I came across while visiting the Capitol Hill neighborhood in Washington, D.C.

As Rob Goodspeed notes in a posting about D.C.'s manhole covers and grates, "beauty aside, to the informed reader manholes can tell a story about the history and function of the modern city."

Above: at work in Chillicothe, Ohio.

Many of the manhole covers on our streets come from U.S. companies like the Wisconsin-based Neenah Foundry or The Ford Meter Box Company in Wabash, Indiana.

But like so much else manufactured, a growing proportion of our manhole covers and and other street gratings are now being manufactured overseas and shipped here. India is perhaps the hot spot for these products.

Want to see what an Indian manhole factory looks like? Take a look at some amazing photos taken by photojournalist J. Adam Huggins for an article in The New York Times ("New York Manhole Covers, Forged Barefoot in India" Nov. 27, 2007). Be sure to view the "media" slideshow (scroll down a bit on the left side of the Times article).

I came across this India-made cover in Kansas City, Missouri.

Want to know more about manholes? Interested in becoming a "drainspotter"? One treasure-trove of information and illustrations is Mimi and Robert Melnick's Manhole Covers (MIT Press, 1994).

As Mimi Melnick tells it, "covers speak to us through their identifying labels. They tell stories of water and power, they whisper steam, they shout out the names of the foundries that cast them."

But their design is also eminently practical. Ever wonder why manhole covers are round? Melnick explains that "Round covers are easier to machine accurately, one reason for the popularity of that shape. Round manhole covers are also preferred because they won't fall into the manholes, and because, once removed, they can be rolled rather than lifted repeatedly." But there's always that darn exception: in Manchester, New Hampshire, manhole covers are apparently triangular. But then, they're just stubborn, independent-minded folks in the Granite State!