The wall at Philly’s 100 Steps has been restored, after an accidental paint job angered the community
Neighbors at Wissahickon were relieved to see the stone tones returned, but the sting of the mistake remained.
A strong chemical smell (with a tad of lemon) greeted Wissahickon neighbors at the 100 Steps on Friday afternoon after city workers washed away an unpopular gray paint job.
The wall along the steps to the Wissahickon Creek Trail had been painted recently after someone called the city’s 311 line to report graffiti. The city originally sent out a crew to power wash it, but the task turned into a painting job, said Thomas Conway, executive director for the Philadelphia Community Life Improvement Program (CLIP).
The regular cleaning crew assigned to that area of Wissahickon was not available, so a different crew was sent out, he added.
“They didn’t have enough power washers to reach the wall,” Conway said, adding that the workers would have needed more hoses to do the job. They painted it instead.
The unexpected paint job immediately drew ire from the community.
On Tuesday, a Reddit user posted a thread with a picture of the wall and its new, dull gray, along with a sharp critique, questioning why a little graffiti had led to the erasure of a community landmark.
“WHO TF PAINTED OVER THIS ENTIRE STONE WALL?
“WHAT TF WERE YOU THINKING?” the post reads.
More than 400 people commented on the post as a storm of complaints came in, bumping the thread over 4,500 times.
Conway said the crew should have come back the next day with additional hoses, rather than painting the wall.
“But we owned up to it very quickly, and we rectified it very quickly as well,” he said.
Resident Joe Visconto, 26, struggled to understand how a coat of gray was better than the graffiti he saw as adding character to the steps.
“The graffiti was cool; there was something for the Phillies, the Eagles, and that show Yellowjackets,” Visconto said.
Waking up to find it gone and replaced made him feel sad, he said, mainly because, to him, the gray was ugly, and it felt disrespectful to the history of the community.
“It looked dull and boring. I’m fine with the graffiti being gone, but not like this,” Visconto said. “This community is multigenerational and tells the story of the people in this neighborhood who have been here for generations; we have to honor that.”
On Friday, the regular crew was at the steps power washing the wall with detergent-based chemicals to get the paint off, Conway said.
Only slight traces of gray on some of the stones and splashes of color on nearby leaves remained of the unwanted paint job.
Longtime resident Nickel Heimann, 39, and his two young children noticed the smell and the return of the stone look as they passed the wall on Friday.
“The ugly gray is gone,” 5-year-old Hugo said with excitement, scrunching his nose at the scent.
Heimann, a construction worker, lamented that city resources were wasted to paint a wall that did not need it.
“It was so sad to see something so beautiful reduced to something so generic,” Heimann said.
He said it seemed like an example of the city considering potential tourists instead of the desires of the community.
Sara Stevenson, executive director of Friends of the Wissahickon, said the incident was a good lesson for the city of what not to do.
“There is a lot of meaning with that rock, and to cover it up was not the right approach,” Stevenson said.
“I know it wasn’t the intention of CLIP; it was an error, but we want to maintain the unique beauty and integrity of these spaces,” Stevenson said.
