archaeography

The scrawled heart first appeared at least two weeks ago and has managed to survive a snowstorm and the general messy, rainy weather of Providence winters. When I say that the heart – quickly drawn in chalk on a stone darker than those around it – showed up then, it’s really a guess. Two weeks ago was when I first noticed it, despite the fact that I pass by this building every day. On the left side of the street when heading west, one of many brick houses converted into university buildings, it previously was part of the landscape of the last five minutes of my morning walk. I generally disregarded these buildings, hurrying past the ongoing construction project across the street to get to class on time. Although marked with a small sign like all campus buildings, naming the Modern Gothic structure ‘Nicholson House,’ it remained nameless to me for several months, seemingly undeserving of any notice.

The chalk heart, however, marks that someone does notice this building. The simple mark is transformative, changing the house from being an undifferentiated part of the university’s campus to a definite place, ‘Nicholson House.’ Once stopping to look at the heart, I observed the curlicues flanking each side of the tapered wall and the intricate patterning of the bricks beneath the window ledge. Ultimately, surrounded by the sludge of melting snow piled up on the sidewalks and running down the street like a moving river, the labeling of the house with a standardized sign failed to create a place as effectively as a graffitoed heart.