Cultural Tourism DC announces seven communities to receive an Art on Call grant for the restoration of antique police and fire call boxes into mini-showcases for original art.

Seven organizations from across the city will transform 21 call boxes into neighborhood icons, adding to the 122 completed boxes already throughout the city. The organizations receiving grants are 16th Street Heights Civic Association, Capitol Hill North Neighborhood Association, Foggy Bottom/West End (GWU), Life Pieces to Masterpieces, Rhodes Tavern DC Heritage Society, Southwest Neighborhood Assembly, and Trinidad Community Association.

Since 2000, Cultural Tourism DC has worked with more than 20 neighborhood and community organizations to transform these untended and often vandalized historic call boxes into art. The program brings communities together by developing art work that incorporates neighborhood history and culture and in turn, gives identity to a place.

Each community selects a theme or color palette for its call boxes, thereby creating recognizable identifiers for its geographic area. The boxes reflect a full array of artistic media, ranging from avante garde to traditional. Media include line drawing, oil paint, sculpture, or photography. Many of the boxes include captions that explain the neighborhood’s history and highlight area notables.

“Art on Call continues to be a great showcase for artists and communities. It exposes residents and visitors to local art and provides a mechanism for communities to work together to promote their neighborhood history, while restoring what was once an eye-sore,” says Linda Donavan Harper, Cultural Tourism DC executive director. “While Cultural Tourism DC’s involvement with the call box restoration program is ending, the groundwork has been laid for local artists to showcase their talents by taking on individual call boxes to restore on their own.”

At the completion of the Art on Call program, Cultural Tourism DC and these community groups will have restored more than 160 boxes across the city in communities such as Mount Pleasant, Dupont Circle, Tenleytown, Southwest, and Capitol Hill. The program will be turned over to the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities for management of its next phase.

First installed in 1860, the police and fire call boxes were once the mainstay of public safety efforts for the city. Their use generally ended in 1976 when the city instituted the 911 system, but the decorative, wrought-iron boxes have remained, firmly embedded in the city’s sidewalks.

Former Mayor Anthony A. Williams helped to launch the restoration of the call boxes in 2002 when he applied a coat of primer to a fire call box at the corner of Eight and G Streets, SE. The program actually began in 2000, when Cultural Tourism DC worked with more than 50 community groups and 200 volunteers from all wards in the city to survey the conditions of the call boxes located in their neighborhoods.

Art on Call is a citywide project of Cultural Tourism DC, DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, District Department of Transportation, and the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development. For more information on the Art on Call program visit www.CulturalTourismDC.org, click on About Us and then Programs.

About Cultural Tourism DC

An independent coalition of more than 230 culture, heritage, and community-based organizations, Cultural Tourism DC and its members help you experience DC’s authentic culture and heritage. For more information, visit www.CulturalTourismDC.org or call 202-661-7581.