Art gallery gets its sign back
May 04, 2009
John Kernaghan
The Hamilton Spectator
http://www.thespec.com/News/Local/article/559680
No one was calling out, "Give me an A, give me a G, give me an H," but everyone at the Art Gallery of Hamilton was cheering yesterday.
The distinctive AGH sign was remounted over King Street West more than three years after a windstorm scrambled the letters.
"There was no wind today, it was perfect," said AGH president and CEO Louise Dompierre. "We're delighted because we feel the sign symbolizes a new Hamilton. People say they identify with it."
The nearly two-metre-tall anodized aluminum letters again stand out distinctively against the sky thanks to a $100,000 do-over, most of it covered by insurance.
The 90-kilogram letters tumbled Feb. 5, 2006, when the system fastening the beam holding them to the roof failed. Two letters, the A and H fell. The G dangled.
Dompierre said it took a long time to determine how to remount them because several parties were involved and "we wanted to get a lot of opinions and make sure it was going to be safe."
The letters, which are lit at night, are fastened to a triangular steel beam that is 20 metres long and weighs 30,000 kilograms.
About four metres of the beam juts out over King West. Three lanes of the street were closed down for four hours yesterday morning to accommodate reconstruction.
The Art Gallery of Hamilton had to pick up some "minimal" costs, Dompierre said, for a design that would beef up the stability of the beam and the letters.
It consists of a cable system and a bar to back up the primary fastening to the roof, plus cables as a precaution for the letters attached to the beam.
The original sign was the crowning glory of the $18-million gallery makeover in 2005.
In the meantime, the old letters were stored at the yard of Sunset Neon of Burlington, which created them. Thieves made off with the A and H, though they were too badly damaged to be reused.
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