One of the things I love about the Internet is the high likelihood that whatever crazy thing I’m interested in, someone out there has put up a web page. Witness, for example, Resurrect Dead, a site devoted to the Toynbee Tile phenomenon.
What’s that? You don’t know about the Toynbee tiles? Neither do most people I try to point them out, sadly. When I was in college in New York, I started noticing that on several streets, someone had somehow embedded a series of tiles into the street that formed the message “Toynbee Idea/In Movie 2001/Resurrect Dead/On Planet Jupiter.” Over the years, I would see more and more of the things pop up, and I would often exclaim to Pattie, “Hey! See those tiles? Were they there the last time we walked on this street?” And she would give me this look like I was completely deranged. (And now we’ve been married for six years. Who’s the deranged one now, eh?) Then I moved back down here, and was surprised to find the tiles throughout Philly as well, including a business-card sized version right at Temple. I eventually discovered a handful of sites devoted to tracking the tiles, which have appeared in cities all over the Western Hemisphere, including Toynbee.net and the afmorementioned Resurrect Dead. From the latter I learned that the tiles first started cropping up in Philly back in the 80s – I had no idea we were the Toynbee Tile capital of the world.
And in a not-quite-ironic development, as I began researching Jane Addams and Hull House, I discovered that she was inspired to start the settlement house by a visit to the world’s first settlement – London’s Toynbee Hall, named for the very fellow who, according to the tiles at least, wants to turn Jupiter into one jumping mortuary.