Crash creates hole in downtown Naperville art wall

The hole in the brick art wall outside Nichols Library in downtown Naperville is gaping.

Maybe 4 feet wide and 5 feet tall, the brick-less space cuts through the center of the piece of artwork called "Man's Search for Knowledge Through the Ages" after a driver crashed into it on Friday, said Brand Bobosky, chairman of the Century Walk Corp. public art group.

"You almost don't know how this could happen," Bobosky said.

The art piece sits at the southwest corner of Webster Street and Jefferson Avenue, adjacent the parking lot for Nichols Library at 200 W. Jefferson. Police responded to an accident there at 1:04 p.m. Friday.

That's when Bobosky said an 81-year-old driver accidentally accelerated into the wall instead of hitting the brakes when she realized the art wasn't a parking space. The force knocked down a section of bricks from the center of the wall and damaged its structural integrity - despite the wall being three bricks thick and reinforced with wire and concrete.

"The one side got moved about seven inches off its base and it's going to have to come down," Bobosky said.

Early estimates put the damage in the range of $50,000 to $100,000 to the piece installed in 1987 by artist Mara Smith of Seattle. Bobosky said Century Walk likely will work with artist Dodie Mondero of Orland Park to conduct repairs by numbering the bricks and then replacing them in the correct order.

Mondero has fixed and maintained other pieces among the 47 Century Walk has put up since 1996 and also has created some of his own, such as the "Everybody Loves a Parade" mural in an alley west of Main Street, which he painted with artists Marianne Lisson Kuhn and Adela Vystejnova.

For now, the art group is working with the city, which owns the property on which the art wall sits, to plan when the unstable portion will come down.

"We're trying to determine the total extent of our damage," Bobosky said. "We certainly want to replace it."