The 50-foot mural of elephants and apes and other wild animals that adorns the underpass walls at Phinney Avenue North at North 57th Street, and which had received media attention this summer because city crews had painted over it, and then uncovered it after public outcry, has been defaced again.
This time, large swaths of graffiti have obliterated an otherwise peaceful sunset scene of African elephants of the Savanna. Larry McMahon, a neighborhood resident, said he's not surprised. A similar mural at the underpass of Dexter Avenue North has also been regularly marred by taggers, he said.
"As far as the murals go, neighbors complain but they want somebody else to take care of them," he said.
The Phinney mural was the subject of public outcry when a resident of the neighborhood, Greg Zuhl, told city officials the mural had been tagged and the city responded by painting over it. When that happened, neighbors lit up the city phones demanding answers.
The city then spent $5,000 to hire a company to pressure wash the mural with a specialized non-chemical spray fortified with volcanic crystals that gently chip away at the surface paint. That task was completed in July. But last week, fresh 4-feet by 6-feet blocks of tagging have soiled the effort.
Russell Bennett who has lived on 57th Street for nearly 16 years has seen the mural at its high and low points. He's not surprised by the most recent spate of vandalism.
"It's been done before," he said, "that's why they put that primer paint in there because there was a lot of tagging."
The Phinney mural was created in 1994 by a group of neighbors through a $2,000 grant as part of the now-defunct Street Smart Art program.
Woodland Park Zoo officials were dismayed by the news.
"We're disappointed to see this treasured mural damaged again after the community, the zoo and the city all came together to restore it so recently," said zoo spokesperson Rebecca Whitham. "Woodland Park Zoo will continue to work with community members and the Seattle Department of Transportation to figure out how best to move forward from here and preserve this mural into the future."
Rick Sheridan, spokesman for Seattle's Department of Transportation was unaware of the recent tagging but said the city really can't do much in terms of controlling it.
"Our approach for this and other murals are to have interested private groups becoming sponsors," he said. "Both the Department of Neighborhoods and SDOT have been looking for a sponsor given that the original sponsor no longer exists."
He added that SDOT isn't suited for mural upkeep, that the work is beyond its artistic capabilities.
If the new pressure wash treatment were to be considered again for this mural and as a way to handle tagging anywhere, that would be a Seattle Public Utilities decision. Calls to SPU were not answered by press time.[[In-content Ad]]
