The long-awaited winners of UCHS"s "Hide the Trash Contest" have been announced by the judges. This effort, a search for designs for containers, methods, or other solutions to keep trash cans and their contents off of sidewalks and out of the public view until collection day, was an effort of UCHS's Historic Streetscapes Committee to provide solutions to one of the area's more vexing problems.
In a Victorian neighborhood of buildings, the majority of which were initially designed for single families, often with servants, "trash" must have originally meant a few leftovers for the chickens and pigs, plus quite a lot of coal ash. Yet, with "progress" and building reuse, we are now faced by a growing daily pile of "disposables" generated by an increased occupancy level with nowhere to stash the stuff before the city collectors come around.
Quite a few neighbors and others put pencil to paper or submitted photo suggestions for dealing with this issue and you can see quite a few of these posted here (see links below). These suggestions might even spark other proposals; we are always open to ideas here since the "problem" and its "solutions" take many forms.
Our winners for this round and their prizes are: First Prize (a porch bench or swing) Deborah Giles & Julie Regnier; Second Prizes (2 tickets to the Holiday House Tour) Amy Orr; Cindy Roberts; Third Prizes (year's membership in UCHS) Robin Gresham Chin; Stephen McCoubrey; Lauren Leatherbarrow.
The Giles/Regnier first place is for a "Garden Screen" for trashcans for the front or sides of the West Philadelphia house that "combines Plants & Structure to create a green screen to complement or enhance this neighborhood of gardens." Click below for a complete view of this and many of the other entries, including some humorous entries by Ruth Molloy and a bold suggestion from Paige Chin, aged 10. All create "food for thought" about trash and how to live with it.
Third Place | Honorable Mention
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