Tracking Down D.C.'s Fallout Shelter Signs
By Lauren Walser | Online Only | Nov. 23, 2010
In the 1960s, the United States was standing ready, bracing itself for what seemed like an imminent nuclear strike. Cities across the country deployed architects and engineers by the hundreds to designate and build fallout shelters, offering citizens protection, both physically and emotionally, from attack.
By the mid-1970s, public interest in these Cold War shelters waned, but today, two residents of Washington, D.C., have teamed up to create an inventory of all the surviving, intact fallout shelter signs in the city. Adam Irish and Melissa Hopper, who launched their project this spring, hope to secure official protection for the signs.
"When you're living in a city like D.C., especially if you were living here during the Cold War, those signs have a very particular meaning, because this city almost surely would have been attacked," says Irish, whose interest in D.C.'s fallout shelters was piqued by a sign hanging from Mount Rona Baptist Church near his former apartment in the Columbia Heights neighborhood. "Whether the shelters could have done anything is a whole different question, but the signs had a very real meaning for residents living here at the time."
Using the Community Shelter Plan Study for D.C. created in 1965, which lists all the shelter sites in the city, Irish and Hopper are visiting each site to determine the status of the building and its fallout shelter sign. They then record their findings on a map on the District Fallout's website.
"The vast majority of signs have been lost," says Irish, a paralegal at the Justice Department.
Adds Hopper, a financial analyst, "And a lot of the buildings aren't even there anymore."
There were about 1,000 designated fallout shelters in the city by 1965, many located in schools, churches, apartment complexes, and federal buildings. Few of the shelters were built expressly as such, but were instead underground, interior rooms in large public buildings that were identified as safe zones and repurposed for a community shelter space.
Only a fraction of the signs still hang from the buildings today—initial surveys suggest only 5 to 10 percent remain. Some signs were lost when their buildings were demolished, says Irish, and others vanished during construction or were pried off by vandals or.
The surviving signs seem to be a product of good fortune. Many have long been obscured from the public eye by the landscaping or an awning. Irish thinks many building owners see them as official government signs that are forbidden to be removed.
"A lot of them blend into the landscape, and I think people just forget they're there," Irish says.
District Fallout joins throngs of other local efforts around the country to locate Cold War fallout shelters. It has generated a great deal of community interest, with D.C. residents frequently writing in to submit photographs or sightings of existing signs.
Though Irish and Hopper haven't yet determined the best course of action for officially preserving the signs and securing their protection, their current focus is to continue to raise awareness of signs and their importance in D.C.'s history.
"These signs are very different from a statue or another historic resource, because they're so directly tied to a historic period," Irish says. "And that's quite rare. When you're doing a Civil War era building, for example, obviously it has Civil War history attached to it, but it's not legible in the way these signs are. In that way, they're a very unique historic resource, and one that isn't always appreciated by private residents or official bodies."
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Comments
Submitted by Daisy at: December 1, 2010
Last year the survey company that I work for was examining old right-of-way maps for a section of NW 8th Avenue in Gainesville, Florida, which we were preparing to survey. There was a jog around one person's property for a bomb shelter that was located in front of the home. We wondered if the shelter was still there and if the current owners knew of it. We never did find out, unfortunately.
Submitted by wizardofkwahs at: November 30, 2010
My Dad worked for Warner Robins Air Force Base and we had people living around us who were installing fallout shelters in their backyards in the 60's. I asked my Dad :when are we going to build one ? He replyed son a fallout shelter is a B.C.A. and I asked whats that Dad, he replyed Body Count Area so after the war, clean up would be safer for those who would have lived and made it through the fallout.
Submitted by Susan at: November 30, 2010
There was a lady in a town near me who catalogued all the stepping stones in people's front yards that were used to step out of a horse-drawn carriage. What else can we think of?
Submitted by Brian at: November 24, 2010
I like this type of do-it-yourself activism. I bet that there are many other historical features of cities which have so far gone undocumented. Lists and maps should be formed. Isolated locations can become connected in this way.