Community Corner
Reports: Penguin Mural May Return to Silver Spring Transit Center
Sally Callmer Thompson's 1989 design of commuting penguins is in storage, awaiting the opening of the Silver Spring Transit Center.
A fanciful mural of commuting penguins that adorned the Colesville Road side of the Silver Spring Metro station for 25 years hasn't gone anywhere, according to the Washington Post's Answer Man column. It's sitting in an unused room in the Silver Spring Civic Building, the Post reports, awaiting the Silver Spring Transit Center to open.
“While I was painting it, I was imagining a sort of fantasy Metro station, where it’s always clean, everybody’s happy, the trains and escalators run perfectly,” said Sally Callmer Thompson, who designed "Penguin Rush Hour" in 1989. “It’s a little Metro utopia.”
The mural was removed in 2004 after 15 years of exposure to rain, wind and snow caused the work to deteriorate. Thompson restored her painting in 2006 and it was put away, with the eventual plan of having the mural adorn the transit center walls.
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