Early in my association with the SDMB, I tried to ask this question. I would post a link, except I can’t find it, probably because it’s too old.
I didn’t really get a satisfactory answer, because I didn’t frame the question in the right way. What I want to know is this: You know how people write their names and so forth in wet concrete, usually when a sidewalk square is being replaced. Then for years afterward, you can see what they’ve written. Near where I live there’s one from 1953 and another from 1949. I think there’s another one nearby from 1937, but the numbers are difficult to read so I’m not sure.
So what’s the oldest you’ve seen, and what city and neighborhood was it in?
Boy, I’ll bert that there’s wet-cement Grafitti from The Roman Empire days. Certtainly thereis written grafitti from then. Plenty of it from Pompeii. Heck, there’s written grafitti from ancient Egypt. I’m just not familiar with cement grafitti that far back.
Personally the oldest grafitti I’ve seen with a name and date isn’t in wet cement – someone carved it into the slate steps in front of the Old North Baptist Church in my home town of South River, N.J. When I was a kid it was the Public Library, so I saw it a lot. Now the building houses municipal offices. It reads “B.B”, followed by the date, which is something like “July 13, 1863”. Somebody carved this into the slate with a knife. The author of the town history thinks it was done to commemorate a Civil War vistory, and identified who “B.B.” might be, but it’s guesswork.
There’s a cement dam across the Hardware River (a glorified stream, really) about 8 miles south of Charlottesville, VA. Someone had marked a date into the wet cement when it was new; I think it was a 1927 date, but it’s been awhile.
Not quite the same, but when I was a kid there was an area near my grandparent’s house that was still kind of wild. Lots of trees, and big rocky areas. One place had a lot of grafitti carved into the rocks. IIRC, some went back to the early 1900’s. I’m gonna have to go check that place out again sometime… it was pretty cool.
OK, it’s not wet cement, but I found a name carved into one of the columns at St. Paul’s cathedral in London dated 1762. I thought that was kinda cool.
Sorry, no cement here, either . . . But my elementary school was built in 1918, and we used the original desks (the wood-and-iron ones you see in antiques stores). There was still a good amount of 1920s carved graffiti readable.
. . . Which gives me another thread topic to post elsewhere . . .
Pompeii’s Pillar along the Missouri River in MT has William Clark’s name carved along with the date, 1804, I think.
I’ve seen the sidewalk graffiti you mention too. Alas, cement quality must be poor these days, as they often crack in a few years. Around here, there are a number of slabs from the 30’s that are still sound.
One neat local quirk about Buffalo is the presence of “sidewalk plates” – cast iron plates bearing the name of the company that poured the concrete, and the date it was poured. Like trainspotters in the UK, there are some folks in Buffalo who collect sidewalk plate rubbings.
I’ve seen sidewalk plates dating to the early 1910s, with the sidewalks still in wonderful condition. Theoretically, there should be some wet cement grafitti that dates back to that time as well.
not cement, but …a friend of mine owns an antebellum house in Madison, Georgia. Up in his attic there are markings/carvings all around the wood moldings of calendar-like appearance. There are years written in different places and occasional names. Local historians believe them to be slave markings.
As far as cement is concerned, there was a pretty cool one on the steps that led downhill outside of my junor high in Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia. If I remember correctly, it said, “Betty 1954”. Of course, it’s really only cool to me 'cause Betty was my aunt. She passed away recently and the school was torn down and rebuilt almost ten years ago. I’ll always remember that though.
Not wet-cement autographs, but carving into cement.
The third oldest university in the nation is Dickinson College (www.dickinson.edu) founded in 1783 by one of the signers of the declaration of Independence: Bob from Accouting (Benjamin Rush)
On the front steps of this grand designed room ( high ceiling, lots of leaded paned windows) that was designed by Thomas Jefferson there are many intials carved into the steps from past students…if you can imagine how old some of those are.
I think that one of the sets of initials is of someone famous… not Hollywood/celebrity famous, but you know, book learnin’ famous.
The outside doors are locked year round to keep traffic off those stairs and are opened only for graduating seniors to walk through after they collect their diploma.
Not graffiti as such, but my cat Lucy left paw prints in a freshly poured sidewalk block at my parents’ house in 1975, just before she disappeared forever, and they’re still there.
(Benjamin Rush)