The Elusive Local Landmark

 

What was happening on this day in 2022, you ask? Well, as in most days, I was curious.

Or, rather, I wish there were a Columbia Curiosity Bureau. It has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?

It’s very likely that the Columbia Archives really is our Columbia Curiosity Bureau. I tend to think of it as the very respectable repository of significant documentation of the Great Columbia Experiment. And yet the archives probably contain a fair amount of the unusual, humorous, and surprising.  - - In Defense of Curiousity, Village Green/Town², 9/30/22

I recently reached out to the good folks at the Columbia Archives because I had a question that was burning a whole in my brain. I wanted to know who designed something. The Gateway. 

No, not the entire location.This. THE Gateway.*

Sculpture and signage for Columbia Gateway: a corporate community

I’ve been thinking quite a bit about this area on account of the ongoing plans to transform Gateway. This image/icon/landmark? has that old-school Columbia feel to me, a bit like those perky flags at the entrance to the Lark Brown restaurant park. Obviously it’s not the same design aesthetic but their purpose is the same: as a more or less permanent placemaking device. 

There must be a more appropriate word for this. It probably has to do with branding.

I reached out to the Archives and got a prompt and helpful reponse from Archives Assistant Aimee Kirby. She sent me a ton of fascinating background information about Gateway, along with the results of her own search on my behalf. 

According to newsletters found in records of The Rouse Company, the Columbia Gateway's grand opening was held in the Summer of 1987 around when the sign may have been built. Although I haven't found any specific mention of who designed the sign in question, a similar graphic design appears on marketing materials created in 1986 by The Rouse Company to promote Columbia Gateway. It seems likely the design could have been an in-house marketing design that was then used to develop the entrance sign/structure.

So, I don’t have a name. But I do know more than I used to and that’s a plus. 

Have you ever read the picture book by Eric Carle entitled The Very Hungry Caterpillar? After each day of increasingly larger feasts, the narrator tells us something important about the green protagonist:

He was still hungry.

Well, I wrote a letter to the Archives and I learned some things I had not known before. But:

I am still curious.

Who designed THE Columbia Gateway? Do you know? Do you think you might know someone who knows? We’re talking mid-1980’s here. And that’s before my time, Columbia-wise.

True confession: when I first moved here there was a Gateway Computer store in the (now-rebuilt) shopping center on Stanford Boulevard. For years I thought the computer company was named after Columbia Gateway. I may have even imagined that the company was headquartered there. 

Live and learn.

What are you curious about?

Village Green/Town² Comments

* Not my photos. If these are yours I am happy to add photo credit or remove at your request.