The Piedmont Pillar Project began with a guy who doesn’t live in Piedmont.
His name is Brad Carper.
He makes his home on a winding street called East Bermuda, nearly two miles to the south and east of the middle-of-Lincoln enclave populated by stately two-stories and sprawling brick ranches.
However, the 64-year-old did grow up in Piedmont.
And he was a paperboy in Piedmont.
And his brother, Jeff, still lives in the Carper family home — just across the way from the Piedmont Project: the restoration of a pair of stone gates with powder-coated black lanterns near 52nd and Randolph, looking just as good as when they first welcomed drivers in 1927.
It’s been three years since Carper stood in Jeff’s yard and his gaze fell upon those gates.
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It struck him that they were looking their age. Missing mortar, the stone darkened, not a lantern in sight.
That seemed like a shame.
“I got an estimate to see how much it might cost to tuckpoint the brick,†said the quality engineer at Kawasaki. “And it was way out of my league.â€
Then he had an idea: “I’ll just write a letter to all the residents of Piedmont and see if they’d be willing to help me out.â€
So he called up the county assessor’s site and found 107 addresses in the Piedmont subdivision.
He wrote a two-page letter, complete with sad pictures of the last remaining set of gates, the sole survivors of the development’s original five — one pair at each entrance.
He asked for donations, calculating the cost of repair at $75 a household.
“This is not some financial scam,†he wrote. “My grandfather lived at 1310 Crestdale in the '30s. My brother still lives in Piedmont ... The older I’ve become the more the past has become important to me.â€
He included his address and his email. Call me, he’d added. I’m still in the phone book.
Then he stamped and mailed his plea and waited.
Checks started showing up in the mail. It took a year to collect enough money to fix the 15-foot-tall arches, know as the Piedmont pillars.
But he wasn’t finished. As Carper collected the cash, more than one resident had a question that went something like this: Wait, weren’t there lanterns, too?
Indeed there were, Carper said, and the brackets were still intact. And thus began the second stage of the Piedmont Project.
Carper visited the State Historical Society in search of old photos. He contacted local historian Jim McKee (who found a photo that included a partial lantern from the 1930s); he reached out to the city’s preservation planner Ed Zimmer (who came up with an aerial shot from the 1950s).
He found a blacksmith willing to recreate the lanterns, and a year and $1,000 later, the lighting fixtures created with old-style rivets were finished.
Now all he needed to do was turn them on.
But it wasn’t that simple. When he contacted LES, they told him: Sorry, not our territory.
“They had no record that these were part of the street light system,†Carper said.
The Lincoln Electric System has only been around since 1966, long after the lanterns were wired for electricity.
“I was like Captain Ahab chasing the white whale trying to get the lanterns turned on,†Carper said.
After meetings and phone calls and an agreement to pay for the cost of the installation, the project was blessed by the Public Works Department.
Carper dug under the gates himself to uncover the original wiring and devised a plan to hook the lanterns up to the photoelectric cell on top of a nearby street light.
He sent out a second round of fundraising emails, stuffed more envelopes (with an assist from a pair of previous donors) and expanded his reach to former Piedmont residents. Plenty of people gave again.
Charley Ogden was one of them.
“I’m very much in tune with keeping the flavor of Piedmont as it is,†said the longtime resident and supporter of the restoration project. “The gates are set for more than my lifetime.â€
Once the lights were wired and working in late September — and a few last pieces of loose brick were tucked in tight — neighbors held a ribbon-cutting ceremony and Carper cut the ribbon.
Next spring, he hopes to host a more formal gathering with refreshments and applause for all who contributed to the $9,400 total.
In the meantime, the Piedmont Pillar Project planner makes a point of appreciating what the people of Piedmont have helped make happen.
“I go through Piedmont on my way to work,†Carper said. “It’s still dark and I can see the lanterns glow.â€