The World’s Tallest Filing Cabinet?

The World’s Tallest Filing Cabinet is 38 feet tall and is made of real file cabinets that have been welded one on top of the other. This towering sculpture was built in 2002 by Bren Alvarez, a Burlington, Vermont artist. Alvarez wanted to create a satirical sculpture that would comment on the bureaucracy of urban planning.

The World’s Tallest Filing Cabinet, actually titled “File Under So. Co., Waiting for…,”   is a stack of 11 brown, beige, black, gray and green metal filing cabinets welded together and stabilized by an interior steel post. The sculpture contains a total of 38 drawers. It silently stands watch over a vacant lot on Burlington’s Flynn Avenue.

 

“File Under So. Co., Waiting for…,”

The sculpture’s title is a reference to Burlington’s controversial Southern Connector (So. Co.), a 2-1/2 mile bypass through Burlington’s South End that would connect the Interstate (I-189) with downtown and help relieve traffic on busy Shelburne Road.

The project was first proposed in 1965 and experienced continuous delays. Alvarez says the structure symbolizes the paperwork that has accumulated since 1965; she wanted one drawer to represent every year the project had been in existence. Each of the 38 drawers representing a year’s paperwork accumulated by the project.

On the side of the sculpture is a map of the area and numerals commemorating the history of the doomed project. Over the decades the project experienced one delay after another, the route and design were changed.  The road was scaled back from four lanes to two. It was delayed due to soil contamination in Burlington’s barge Canal. Forty years later the Champlain Parkway still does not exist.

 

Location: Alvarez says,”The sculpture is very site-specific; it’s right on the center line of the Connector.” The World’s Tallest Filing Cabinet is located at 208 Flynn Avenue in Burlington, and is easy to find. To get there:

From I-189, drive north on Shelburne Rd./US 7 for five blocks,

Turn left (west) onto Flynn Avenue,

The file cabinet is in a field on the right, between Foster and Briggs Streets.

 

 

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• Fort Ste. Anne
• New Lake Champlain Blueway Trail Guide Available Online
• Vermont’s Champlain Region State Historic Sites Open May 27th
• Montys Bay Wildlife Management Area
• Diamond Island – Lake Champlain Islands