York Town Square

This closeup of a cake is part of a York Fair panel, one of 18 that make up the Murals of York. This photo from 2005 shows that this 120-foot by 24-foot mural on the East Market Street Parking Garage is thin up close. (See additional photos below.) Background posts: Don’t know much about York County history? Part I, Don’t know much? Part II, Don’t know much? Part III and If you want to see the Murals of York up close …

I’ve blogged that York’s East Market Street Parking Garage is an artifact of history because it represented the downtown’s futile efforts to stave loss of its retail base to the suburbs in the late 1960s.
I’ve also blogged that the wide, skinny York Fair mural on the parking garage’s side represents a curious juxtaposition because the vehicles parking there are part of the reason that agriculture, celebrated by the fair, is declining.
Further, that mural appears to be in the process of being subsumed by the parking garage’s white side… .

This longer view shows that the mural appears to have been patched in at least two places designated by lighter background paint. The chocolate cake in the photo above can be seen in the lower left panel.
That fading again symbolizes the loss of farmland for commuter housing and other development. The public pushback against preservation of Highpoint and Lauxmont Farms is indicative of apathy about that agricultural demise.
We’ve suggested before that planned renovations to the parking garage take into account restoration of the mural.
That still makes sense because there’s little indication that curatorYork County Heritage Trust has the financial muscle to tend to all 18 murals.
The Murals of York were not painted with permanency in mind. But now that they’re up and have become community treasures, their preservation is vital. They’re part of the downtown’s streetscape and should be so for a long, long time.

This image is either a rendering of the mural, pre-painting, or a shot of the actual mural soon after it was painted in 1997.