Fading Figures in Davis Square 

This past July, I walked into the major intersection in Davis Square, Somerville, to run some errands before meeting my friends for dinner. The day could not have been more perfect: the plaza was spread out underneath a broad expanse of cloudless blue sky, and flowers were blooming along the community bike path which threads its way through Morrison Avenue and Broadway. Sunlight reflected off of the windows of the shops and restaurants lining Elm Street: a beer garden, a high-end Mexican restaurant chain, a curated plant and flower store, a brand-new marijuana dispensary. As I turned towards the iconic facade of the historic Somerville Theatre (conveniently for me, tucked next to a CVS where I was en route to buy my new $25 shampoo) I watched a woman walking in front of me jump sideways, then stumble to a stop, whipping her head around with her hand against her heart. She had encountered a pair of statues placed centrally in the plaza: an elderly man and woman, so lifelike that from the corner of one’s eye they appear as real people making their way through the square. 

The statues depict Somerville residents Bill and Alice Mosho, sculpted by the artist James Tyler in 1983 for part of the MBTA’s “Arts on the Line” program to accompany the Red Line extension project into Somerville and Cambridge (Kaufman). In the forty years since the statues’ creation, they have retained their place of prominence in Davis Square plaza, and they reflect their community’s ambivalence towards the developments that have accompanied the new subway station. In the plaza, the woman recovered and walked onwards. The old man and the woman, encased in concrete, remained where they were—frozen in place and left behind.