By Nancy Miller Chenier
Perhaps this should start with a question to Lowertown residents. What do you call the pipe railings that still delineate some neighbourhood properties and how many are still standing? Johanne McDuff captured a rare image of an unidentified man refreshing the paint on his pipe fence in this mid-1970s photograph of Lowertown.
Where these pipe fences still exist, they create a low horizontal border between sidewalk and grass. They are slowly disappearing as the front of our houses become flower and/or vegetable gardens or convert to parking spots. These simple but ingenious boundary markers appear to be made from used metal plumbing pipes and joints supported by similar piping or cement posts – a DIY answer to picket fences. Where current practice might see these old plumbing pieces go to landfill or a metal recycling facility, early Lowertown residents turned them into useful indicators of private space.