Roadside Attraction: Car Arch in Palo Alto, CA

You're wandering along a downtown Palo Alto street when you notice something odd about the two-story arched entry to a brick, Post Modernish law office headquarters.  The decorations on the arch are not carved stone faces, or animal or plant motifs...they're cars.  A kind of history of the automobile, in fact, told with castings of different models.  You identify a Chevy Impala from 1990 or so, a Ford Taurus, an early 80s Pontiac GP, a '73 Buick Century, a '59 Chevy, and on up to the top of the arch, where 1930s streamliners with helmeted fenders give way to stately creations from the Roaring Twenties and thence to horseless carriages.  Each series of 3 cars is separated from the series above it by sculptured tires (a deft touch) and these get narrower and rounder (reflecting a reverse march of technology) the higher (and thus earlier) your eyes travel along the sides.  Just above the base on each side there's a Car of the Future, and below each one, the sculptor has crafted a quizzical egg, which implies some unanticipated idea technology may hatch for us.  As the date on this piece is 1990, perhaps Emeryville artist Scott Donahue hadn't expected the autonomous, driverless cars now being incubated in the nearby labs of Google and Tesla.

The Car Arch is located at 390 Lytton Street in Palo Alto, CA. 

Photo credits:  the author