The Reverberations Crosswalk is a pavement mural that enhances pedestrian safety for children and residents walking to and from Margaret Brent Elementary/Middle School while celebrating the school’s art education focus. Located at 26th and St. Paul Streets in central Baltimore, the artistic crosswalk features large scale icons in white representing the arts, love, and beauty, surrounded by reverberating outlines on top of a base layer of angled shapes in eye-catching colors, including turquoise, orange, lime green, and salmon red. The symbols and colors that make up the design are inspired by drawings created by students during a workshop held at the school in June 2018. The icons include a crayon, music note, book, paint brush, microphone, heart, and flower.
Graham Projects worked closely with the Friends of Margaret Brent, Live Baltimore, Margaret Brent Elementary/Middle School, the Harwood Community Association, the Charles Village Civic Association, and Baltimore City Department of Transportation (DOT) to design, approve, and install the public artwork. As part of the community-based design process, Graham Projects co-led a drawing workshop with Arts Integration Coordinator Pam Negrin engaging students to generate visual themes that were integrated into three designs proposed to community members at several public meetings. The Reverberations design was selected based on community feedback and votes tallied. Graham Projects trained local children and volunteers to assist with installation of the large scale pavement mural.
Graham Projects worked with DOT on designing and installing the safety-enhancing bump outs on either end of the crosswalk. Bump outs are sidewalk extensions that slow cars and make it safer for people to cross. In this case, the bump outs were created by marking off part of the curb lanes as pedestrian space using line striping and flex-posts.The extended bump out areas and crosswalk filled with iconic, bright crosswalk artwork enhances safety by attracting pedestrians to activate their street crossing and drawing the attention of passing motorists to the pedestrians’ safety needs and right-of-way.
The original artwork was made with custom colored, federally-specified traffic paint mixed with a traction-enhancing aggregate. At the time this traffic paint was the only product approved for use on city streets that the community could afford. In the years since Graham Projects worked with DOT on approving additional, higher-durability products for use in art projects on city streets. In September, 2023 Graham Projects restored the Reverberations Crosswalk using higher durability epoxy paint and MMA coatings.
The 2023 restoration of the Reverberations Crosswalk in was supported by a grant from the Johns Hopkins Neighborhood Fund secured by the Friends of 26th Street Corridor.
