Gum Wall facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Gum Wall |
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 General view in 2017 |
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| Surface: | Chewing gum |
| Location: | Post Alley, Seattle, Washington, U.S. |
The Gum Wall is a famous brick wall in Seattle, Washington, USA. It's located under the busy Pike Place Market in a narrow street called Post Alley. This unique wall is completely covered in used chewing gum! Imagine a wall several inches thick with gum, stretching about 15 feet (4.6 meters) high and 50 feet (15 meters) long. It started by accident in the 1990s near the Market Theater. Over time, it became a popular tourist attraction and a well-known spot in the city. Since 2015, the Gum Wall has been cleaned regularly to protect the bricks from the sugar in the gum.
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The Story of the Gum Wall
The Gum Wall is right next to the box office of the Market Theater in Post Alley. This theater is a place where people enjoy comedy shows and other small performances. The tradition began in 1991 when the theater started hosting "Theatresports" by Unexpected Productions. People waiting for shows began sticking their used gum to the wall. At first, they even pushed pennies into the gum!
Later, the coins were taken out, but the gum stayed. The people in charge of the market, the Pike Place Market Preservation and Development Authority, tried to clean the walls several times. However, the gum kept coming back. Around 1999, they decided to let the gum wall stay, realizing it had become a fun and unique spot for visitors.
By the late 2000s, the wall of gum had grown to be about 50 feet (15 meters) long, with gum reaching as high as 20 feet (6.1 meters). Some creative visitors even arranged their gum pieces to make tiny art designs. As of 2024, the Gum Wall is about 54 feet (16 meters) long and 8 feet (2.4 meters) high. Experts estimate there are about 180 pieces of gum on each brick!
Keeping the Wall Clean
On November 3, 2015, the market officials announced a big cleaning project. It was the first time the entire wall was cleaned in 20 years! This special steam cleaning was done to stop the sugar in the gum from damaging the old bricks. Before this, only small areas were cleaned if gum was stuck in places it shouldn't be. To celebrate, the market even held a photo contest for fans to share their favorite memories of the wall.
The cleaning started on November 10, 2015, and took 130 hours to finish. Workers removed over 2,350 pounds (1,066 kg) of gum! A local company was hired for the job, which cost about $4,000. They used steam machines that reached very high temperatures (up to 280°F or 138°C). This steam helped loosen the gum without hurting the bricks. All the removed gum was sent to a regular landfill.
Right after the cleaning, people started adding gum to the wall again! There were no rules to stop them. Some of the new gum pieces were even placed as memorials to important events, like the November 2015 Paris attacks. The Gum Wall has been cleaned two more times since then, in September 2018 and November 2024.
A Famous and Unique Spot
In 2009, the Gum Wall was called one of the top 5 "most touched" tourist spots, right after the Blarney Stone in Ireland. This means many people interact with it! Jay Inslee, who was the governor of Washington state, once said it was his "favorite thing about Seattle you can't find anywhere else."
The Gum Wall is also a starting point for local "Ghost Tours" and a popular place for wedding photographers to take unique pictures. Many visitors use gum to create messages of love, making the wall a bit like other romantic places around the world, such as the Pont des Arts bridge in Paris where people used to put "love locks."
Is It Art?
Even though market officials worried about the gum harming the bricks, many people see the act of sticking gum on the wall as a form of collective action. They believe it's a kind of "collective art," where something usually seen as messy or bad becomes a unique piece of art created by thousands of people. Sometimes, artists even stick copies of their own work onto the wall. Because the wall isn't cleaned very often, some people also create graffiti art on spots where there's less gum and more space to see it.
In January 2024, a local artist named Rudy Willingham made a special mural on the wall. He used 200 pieces of gum to create a picture of Pete Carroll. Pete Carroll was the head coach of the Seattle Seahawks football team and was famous for chewing a lot of gum during games! The mural is about 2 feet (0.6 meters) tall and shows him wearing a headset, all made from different colored gum.
See also
In Spanish: Gum Wall para niños
