This functioning retaining wall in a park in Gahanna, Ohio, was the brainchild of the developer and Dale during a visit to a quarry. The original design called for curved concrete walls. Some form of structural support was necessary to transition from the street level down to the creek nearby, but some 25' below the street level. The lower level lagoon area is reached by stone stairs at either end, and a gently sloping ramp. The city hosts an annual blues and jazz festival, and one of the main stages is in the park. Once involved with the design process, Dale's wheels started spinning pretty fast. The original idea, still possible, was that the wall would become an ongoing stone carving performance. The city hoped to host a stone carver's symposium, during which time the Stone Carver's Guild was to come together to create a single large carved "mural" into the wall. This was to inaugurate a one hundred-year program of scholarships for area students interested in a career in the arts. Each year a winning student's idea would be translated into the wall by a professional carver; the student would receive a small plaque on the wall in recognition of their effort and a scholarship to a school of their choice; and the city would gain a most unique record of sculpture and support of the arts and the area's young people.

Then the housing market began to make itself annoying.

Still, a great idea and I hope we can do it someday.

These blocks, weighing up to 40,000 pounds each, are fit together with nothing between them. Lifted into place by a 90,000 pound crane with nylon straps, they were stacked on bags of ice so we could pull out the frozen straps. The ice was then torched, and as the ice was melting, pry bars were used to "fine tune" the stone's placement. Each stone was test fit and sculpted into shape to fit against the adjacent stone. As the stones ranged up to 5' deep, some of the joints were sculpted so that a viewer can see into the wall the full five feet.

The largest of these cracks was exploited under ground to form a stone tunnel about 10' deep. At the end of the tunnel we built a box of mirrors with a mirror-polished stainless steel tube that ended with a small window on the floor of the upper level. A prism was suspended in the tube, and the tunnel was then covered up when the upper level was formed. Now on bright days a soft rainbow of light comes from the exposed crack in the wall.

Working on this scale is challenging, but a lot of fun. Several months went into the engineering and construction of this project, and we are grateful to have been part of it.