Entry 4

In the midst of a city all too familiar with rust, verdigris glows strange in the crepuscular light. I like to think of this bright cyan crust as rust’s counterpoint: where rust is a sign of deterioration, verdigris is a sign of growth, a coat, cover, blanket. Rust is disintegration; verdigris, a kind of blooming. The Statue of Liberty was not always green. Cast in bronze, when it was dedicated in 1886 it was a dark caramel color. Some time after the turn of the century, a patina began to spread over her skin, caused by the oxidation of the copper. By 1906 the statue was completely covered. While Congress authorized funding to repair the statue, the public protested and the Army Corps of Engineers decided that the verdigris, in fact, protected the statue. As a 1906 New York Times article relates, Lady Liberty is “enveloped in a singular mantle of varying shades of light green, delicate white, and a subtle dash of yellow. The whole gives a marvelous harmony of blended colors...as striking as it is unique.”

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The Porter Angel in Allegheny Cemetery dates from sometime between 1910-1920. Originally a sandstone sculpture, it was replaced by a replica cast in bronze by Brenda Putnam. The androgynous angel stands on the second of the three steps that make up the granite pedestal, long robes covering its body and draping over its feet. You can tell that one of its legs is gently bent, and its torso is twisted slightly to the side. It appears in mid-motion, though it is unclear whether the angel is ascending or descending the stairs. Its head is turned to the side, gazing downward. Its right hand is outstretched, thumb and forefinger almost meeting as though to pluck something out of the air, and its left hand reaches forward toward me. Its wings are outspread gloriously behind it.

We recognize more human than bird in the angel, as though the wings are an afterthought, an idiosyncrasy that just happens to differentiate the celestial messengers from ourselves. Yet there is something of the beast in the angel, something inhuman and wild. The crows, as usual, wheel above me, calling out to each other in their inscrutable, cacophonous tongue. Angel, neither human nor animal, of this world or the next. Messengers of the in-between. We envy their freedom, but relish our own free will. The verdigris softens the angel’s edges, radiant. Unearthly is the word that comes to mind.

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Rust. I think of the neighborhood of Lawrenceville that surrounds the cemetery. Narrow row houses line the streets and warehouses gape onto a wide network of back alleys, a cityscape largely unchanged since the industrial era. In the heyday of the steel industry, this neighborhood was filled with blue collar workers and manual laborers, the bodies that fed furnaces and sloughed off slag from pig iron. And in the middle of it all, three hundred pristine green acres, crowded with the mausoleums and memorials of the wealthy—including Henry Kirke Porter, businessman and Congressional representative.

Walking the scenic route back to Center Avenue through side streets and alleyways, I come across a shrine to the Virgin Mary someone has set up in their small front yard, behind a rickety gate whose black paint is peeling away to expose the red-brown rot beneath. Electric blue Christmas lights are strung around the altar, flicker on as the twilight deepens. They illumine Mary’s face and outstretched hands, bathing her in blue-green.

In the garden behind her, the daffodils have begun to lift their heads from the soil.

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