Lincoln Highway News

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports that the Lincoln Highway Heritage Corridor has been awarded $49,340 to build giant roadside attractions along its 200 miles of the Lincoln Highway. The projects will be designed and built by vocational/technical school students in themes that honor the 250th anniversary of Pittsburgh and its region. This and another article in Pop City calls them “roadside giants,” and in fact, the LHHC’s Kristin Poerschke tells me they hope to give each of the vo-tech schools a copy of my and Sarah’s Roadside Giants and Roadside Attractions books as part of the grant to help them with their designs.

The LHHC is one of 100 regional and grassroots organizations and artists who received a total of $1 million in grants to help celebrate the anniversary. LHHC director Olga Herbert says they are honored because only 12 were selected from the 230 regional applications.

LHHC will collaborate with four career and technical schools in Greensburg/Hempfield, Latrobe/Ligonier, Somerset, and Bedford/Everest as well as with four communities along the Lincoln Highway, giving studens a chance to be creative and contribute something permanent to the communities:

The project envisions the sculptures to include items like vintage motor vehicles, historical figures like George Washington, images from popular culture like Texaco gas attendants and diner waitresses, old fashioned bicycles and gasoline pumps. The project will call upon graphic arts students to design the super sized metal sculptures. Other students will weld the metal, and design and printmaking students will be in charge of the brochures. Not to be left idle, the culinary arts students will bake gigantic models of the sculptures.

The LHHC, one of 12 such heritage areas in the state, promotes economic development through tourism along the historic route of the Lincoln Highway in Westmoreland, Somerset, Bedford, Fulton, Franklin and Adams counties.

Tags: Bedford, Greensburg, highway, Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, roadside giants, students, vocational

This entry was posted on December 21, 2007 at 1:26 am and is filed under highways, history, Road trip, roadside, signs, transportation, travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.