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Articles
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| Call Boxes |
VOICE writes, "BY BEN WEINSTEIN
The city says it has accounted for two of three historic emergency call boxes recently reported missing from street corners around the new Nationals baseball stadium.
Until late last summer or early this fall, the three police and fire call boxes stood on sidewalks along 1st Street SE at the corners of L, N and O streets. Fort Meyer Construction Corp., a company contracted by the city, removed the cast-iron fixtures to facilitate street and sidewalk work around the ballpark, according to the District Department of Transportation. "
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"They're in the process of being replaced," said Transportation Department spokesperson Erik Linden. He said that two of the boxes were put in storage for protection. "[The call boxes] will be reinstalled once the work is winding down."
Linden said the department has not yet found the third call box and could not say where it was originally located. But all three sat on sites now under construction, and Linden said his agency "made an effort to underscore that [the call boxes] are historic assets."
Linden said he does not know what penalties his agency would levy if the missing call box was damaged during construction or removed without permission. A Fort Meyer spokesperson said he could not comment on city-contracted work.
The city started installing call boxes in the 1860s, according to Cultural Tourism DC, a nonprofit group leading the District's effort to restore the "abandoned police and fire call boxes as neighborhood artistic icons."
Cultural Tourism's Web site says that in the 1970s the 911 emergency-call system replaced the call boxes, "and the working electronic components were removed by 1995. Yet the call boxes remained, too large and heavy to remove and subject to deterioration from weather and vandalism."
Before Linden said the Transportation Department investigated the missing call boxes, Jane Freundel Levey, Cultural Tourism's chief program officer and historian, pointed out that the boxes are still in sidewalks across the city because they're "so big and heavy," and difficult to move.
Levey said each call box weighs about 2,000 pounds and is set about 7 feet in the ground, with another 7 feet visible above sidewalks. "It's not a casual endeavor," she said of removing one.
Levey said a few call boxes have been stolen -- some cut off above ground level, but at least one other was taken intact. A witness reported seeing two men with a truck steal a call box earlier this year in front of a church in the Shaw neighborhood.
Levey said graffiti and other reparable damage is much more common than theft or more serious damage. She said that the call boxes are irreplaceable, but she does not know of a market for them. She said they might be sold simply for their cast iron.
The three call boxes from First Street SE were not yet refurbished, but the Earth Conservation Corp. plans to repaint about 40 area call boxes, including those three.
If anyone has information on missing or vandalized call boxes, Levey said to call Cultural Tourism at 202-661-7581.
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Posted on Nov 09, 2007 15:00pm.
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