Board votes to demolish sculpture

• By CHARLES LUSSIER
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Apr 18, 2008 - Page: 2B - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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The East Baton Rouge Parish School Board voted Thursday to tear down the avant-garde sculpture built more than 21 years ago in front of Westdale Middle School.

The demolition clears the way for the Baton Rouge Fire Department to build a fire station on the site. Supporters of the monument have until July 1 to move the monument; failing that, it will be torn down.

The planned demolition is the third time in eight years that school system leaders considered demolishing the concrete-and-brick structure at Jefferson Highway and Claycut Road.

“You have the legal right to tear it down, but you do not have the moral right,” Ted DeMuro told the board. His students built the monument between 1986 and 1994.

In October, the School Board leased 1.3 acres on that corner, provided the Fire Department worked out an acceptable arrangement with the supporters of the monument.

Over the course of three months, supporters submitted three successive plans for a fire station that would be built to the rear of the property and preserve the monument. All were rejected and the issue returned to the School Board.

The vote was 8-3 to tear down the monument. Opposing the demolition were board members Jill Dyason, Noel Hammatt and Darryl Robertson.

Hammatt proposed a compromise: Give the parties two more months to work out a plan that would allow the monument and the fire station to coexist.

Hammatt’s motion generated a 5-5 vote, two short of the seven needed to pass. Hammatt, Dyason and Robertson were joined by board members Bill Black and Tarvald Smith.

Opposing the compromise were board members Jerry Arbour, Greg Baldwin, Randy Lamana, Vereta Lee and Derrick Spell. Board member W.T. Winfield did not vote on the compromise, although he did later vote in favor the demolition. Board member Jay Augustine did not attend the meeting.

From a distance, the structure looks like a jumble of brick arches, columns and walls. To those more familiar with it, each section, abstractly, spells out the school’s name.

The sculpture includes hundreds of detailed tiles created by students from “The Community,” a once-popular program at Westdale. Students from Capitol High also helped.

The monument is listed on the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s inventory of American sculptures.