The paint is crumbling away from the murals painted on the downtown railroad bridges at West Fayette Street and West Street, the vision of renowned artist Steve Powers. Credit: Mike Greenlar | Central Current

Spring comes. Summer waits. Fall leaves. Winter longs.

Thousands upon thousands of Central New Yorkers, walking on city sidewalks or waiting in idling cars at nearby red lights, have often contemplated those messages in the heart of Syracuse — especially in February, March, April or even early May, the months when it can seem to be an unending grind before warm spring days finally score a knockout against enduring cold and ice.

The familiar words are painted on the old bridges used by the New York, Susquehanna and Western Railway (NYSW) above West Street, the arterial that serves as the border between downtown Syracuse and the Near Westside. Yet those towering letters are quickly giving way to rust, making it possible that a day will arrive before long when the words are simply unreadable.

In a classically mysterious text message, Steve Powers, the internationally known Brooklyn-based artist who came here 17 years ago to create those murals, responded to my message about the condition of the bridges by writing:

“Hello! Age is beauty!”

Powers has always celebrated — even spotlighted — the rust and grit of aging American cities. The murals that he created in Syracuse with a team of artists, Powers wrote, “were meant to last five years, so every minute after that is a gift.”

Artist Steve Powers: His daughter Evelyn was an infant when he painted iconic messages on railroad bridges in Syracuse. Credit: Courtesy Steve Powers

Personally, I’ve always appreciated the take-from-it-what-you-will nature of the messages, especially as I consider the truth of “winter longs” on grim winter days — though I find the murals generate countless passionate opinions, up and down, from others who also see them all the time.

The swift advance of rust leaves some obvious questions for the community about the artwork on those bridges:

Do you let time and nature do what it will? Do you bring back Powers to restore those messages — or to provide the inspiration for some new ones? Or do you go in some entirely new artistic direction — assuming you even find a way to pay for a new project?

Leaving them be, as Powers noted, carries its own distinctive statement about change and an industrial past within an evolving community:

“My take is that the bridges are telling a story, and maybe we are not at the beginning, but somewhere far from the end.

“That said, if I was called to paint, I would serve.”

Maarten Jacobs, executive director of the Allyn Family Foundation, remains deeply appreciative of Powers, his cryptic ruminations and his work. Almost 20 years ago, as director of the then-heavily-funded Syracuse Near Westside Initiative, Jacobs was the guy who invited Powers to Syracuse to transform the appearance of the old Delaware, Lackawanna and Susquehanna railroad bridges — now used by the NYSW railway — over West Street and West Fayette Street.

“Those bridges mean so much to me,” said Jacobs, who sees them as symbolic of a transition in civic thinking. We talked about how travelers knowledgable about Powers’ work sometimes pull off the Thruway to stop in Syracuse, on a pilgrimage to see the bridges.

Powers took on the project, Jacobs said, at a time when “public art was so rare in Syracuse.” The hand-painted effort cost about $100,000, and the entire focus of the initiative — which Powers described as part of his “Love Letter” theme in several large cities — was breaking down physical and emotional walls between the Near Westside and downtown.

In the 1960s, massive construction turned West Street into the arterial “footer” for a West Side expressway that never happened. The road itself — intended as the entranceway and exit for a highway — was hostile and frightening to pedestrians. Jacobs said the rusty and crumbling metal walls of the bridges seemed like harsh symbols of that divide.

The murals were meant both to beautify that space, and to humanize it.

Jacobs knows many advocates for the arts in Syracuse believe any community mural involving public money and a large commission ought to be done by local artists. Jacobs likes to think there’s a way to “thread the needle.” His thought would be asking Powers to return with sort of a supervising vision, allowing him to work with Syracuse artists on either restoring the original messages or creating some new ones.

Paint chips away from the ‘Love Letter’ messages on a Syracuse railroad bridge. Credit: Sean Kirst | Central Current

But Jacobs also understands that not everyone sees it that way.

Powers is a contemporary artist and muralist from Brooklyn. Often known as “ESPO” – Exterior Surface Painting Outreach – he built a reputation as a graffiti artist before shifting toward an emphasis on studio art. Powers told me years ago how he arrived in Syracuse and went door-to-door on the Near Westside before he ever took a brush to the bridges, talking to neighbors and coming up with messages that he hoped would resonate in the community.

In 2013, in a column I wrote for Syracuse.com and The Post-Standard, Powers reflected on the genesis for his Syracuse message about the seasons. The idea, he said, came straight from families on the Near Westside.

“The more we talked, the more we got the vibe that they’re really proud of the four seasons and, if you don’t like snow, you might be better served in other communities,” Powers told me for the piece, which included these thoughts on the origins of the murals:

“Nothing to do is everything with you,” he said, is a tribute to the idea that people need to understand and appreciate what’s around them, that “you can have nothing and it’s everything, with the right attitude.” Powers met teens in the neighborhood who’d rarely strayed beyond the blocks where they were raised, and another message — “Now that we are here, nowhere else matters” — was, on at least one level, a signal of hope and affirmation.

“The world could be Syracuse,” Powers said, “and that could be enough.”

The murals also feature the now-familiar Syracuse line — “I paid the light bill just to see your face” — a thought Jacobs said was inspired by an actual reflection from a neighbor.

The challenge, years later: In 2027, much of the paint is visibly chipping off and falling away. Jacobs said that transition raises a simple question: “Do we want Steve to restore them or do we do a blank slate?”

Maarten Jacobs, executive director of the Allyn Family Foundation Credit: Courtesy Allyn Family Foundation

Eric Ennis, chief development officer for Mayor Sharon Owens, said the future of those bridges is certainly on the city’s radar, and Ennis essentially makes the same point as Jacobs:

This is a moment, above all else, to ignite the conversation.

“The City of Syracuse welcomes the opportunity to engage in a dialogue with local artists and to work closely with the Public Arts Commission as we explore improvements to the murals along the railroad bridges originally completed through the Near Westside Initiative and artist Steve Powers in (2010),” Ennis wrote in a statement.

“These murals represent an important example of our ever-expanding public art scene in Syracuse, and we are very interested in collaborating with artists and partners to identify the resources that are needed in order to restore these bridges for new and rehabilitated public art spaces alike.”

‘Nothing to do is everything with you’ — a downtown message for 17 years. Credit: Sean Kirst | Central Current

While a spokesperson for the NYSW Railroad in Cooperstown said the railroad is open to working with the community “toward making the downtown area more welcoming and pleasant,” the question remains:

What does that work entail, and who pays for it?

Bennie Guzman, chair of the Syracuse Public Arts Commission, said it’s impossible to discuss any vision for the bridges until the commission sees a true proposal. But former commission chair Tina Zagyva said she is no fan of the existing murals.

She said “there are local artists here” who should get first shot at any commission offered for providing a new look. She said she always saw the messages as cryptic and having little to do with people living nearby.

“I think it’s time to retire them,” said Zagyva, who maintains the question of how to best spend any taxpayer-supported artistic commission — if that is the way funding goes with the bridges — should really be a “participatory process” where the community decides what it wants.

Jacobs sees the bridges — and Powers’ role in their transformation – as intertwined with what is happening on a large scale in Syracuse, right now. The massive plan to remove the Interstate 81 bridges downtown is essentially about connectivity, and the “Love Letter” initiative was an early statement of that philosophy.

Paints crumbles from the image of a light bulb, on a downtown bridge. Credit: Sean Kirst | Central Current

Jacobs hopes that a collaborative approach — bringing Powers back, to work with local artists — would offer a communal solution. In our text exchange, when I asked Powers if he’s willing to return, he responded: “If the resources and the will was there of course.”

He noted that his daughter Evelyn was an infant when the project came to be, and he spent much of his time in Syracuse carrying her around the area or pushing her in a stroller — which only magnifies the personal meaning of his work on the bridges, still part of an active railroad.

“I always said the first coat we painted was the most important,” Powers wrote. “We all love trains and spent as much time scraping and priming as we did painting everything after.”

In a mysterious thought that somehow seems as good a way to end this piece as any, Powers reflected about the restoration and the inevitable changes that led to today’s situation:

“Rust never sleeps, but she took a vacation for a while. Maybe she went to Buffalo.”

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Sean Kirst is a columnist with The Central Current. He has been an Upstate journalist for more than 50 years. He held his first reporting job as a teenager and worked for newspapers in Dunkirk, Niagara...