Short History of Highland Neighborhood in six mosaics

Highways... They are the veins of the economy and millions of cars are constantly moving people and cargo from here to there. We all know very well how everything looks like from the highway, but very little of how the highway looks from the surrounding area. And mostly they don't look really nice. Gray concrete walls, pipes and columns, dust and water... Quite often the highway needs some additional constructions like soundproof walls to separate the residential areas and noisy, dusty highways. And... as I said, these parts rarely attract our attention. 

But... sometimes it's different, like this wall in Highland Neighborhood.

 

I found these mosaics a while ago when I was driving through the neighborhood and decided to come back to learn more about them. I didn't find much information about this series but it seems like Martha Keating and Bob Luna made them in collaboration with neighborhood schools. The artists created the mosaics and the kids created the tiles for the border. All of them were made and installed back in 1993 (and restored in 2017) on the concrete sound wall, separating I-25 from the neighborhood. They call it Neighborhood Epic and each of them has the name (you can try to find the tile with the title on the top border).

Winter on Platte

On the Platte

Celebrations of the Neighborhood

The Trolley

The 60s

The Art

You can learn about this place in a series of these mosaic pictures. We missed the very first one (it was hidden around the corner), but the others tell you the story from the time of native Indians living on Platte River banks, through first European settlers coming here, the working class Italian immigrant area and lately becoming a Spanish speaking community. 

Here is one of the artists, Bob Luna staying in front of the Celebrations of the Neighborhood.

Pictures were taken on September 22, 2018.