Fremont Troll under the bridge
— — the neighbourhood that decided to keep a giant.
Not only on a wall.
“Eighteen feet of cast concrete under the north end of the Aurora Bridge, clutching a real Volkswagen Beetle in one fist. Four local artists built it in 1990 after winning a competition put on by the Fremont Arts Council. The hubcap eye glints when a phone light catches it. Visitors climb its arm for a photograph and then walk back down the hill into the rest of Fremont. The Troll is free, open whenever Seattle is awake, and a stand-in for the whole neighbourhood's refusal to take itself seriously.
Fremont Troll under the bridge, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
The Fremont Troll sits beneath the north end of the Aurora Bridge, at the junction of N 36th Street and Troll Avenue in the Fremont neighbourhood of Seattle, Washington. It is eighteen feet tall, cast in concrete and steel rebar, and grips a real Volkswagen Beetle in its left hand. Four local artists, Steve Badanes, Will Martin, Donna Walter, and Ross Whitehead, built it in 1990 after winning a competition organised by the Fremont Arts Council to revive the space under the bridge, which had become a dumping ground. The sculpture sits on public right-of-way, free to visit at any hour.
The Troll is a single-pour concrete sculpture wrapped over a welded steel armature, with a hubcap inset as its right eye. The Volkswagen in its left hand is a real 1968 Beetle, originally with a California license plate and reportedly containing a time capsule with an Elvis Presley plaster bust at installation. The car's metal has slowly oxidised under the bridge's shadow; the concrete has stained where rain runs through the bridge deck above. The work was commissioned at a budget of about $20,000 and has aged without major restoration apart from periodic paint touch-ups to the eye. The bridge above carries State Route 99.
The Troll is open every hour of every day and costs nothing. Street parking is available on N 36th and along Troll Avenue, with no time limits posted at the immediate site. The sculpture is climbable; children regularly scramble onto its arm and shoulder for photographs. Halloween brings the largest annual gathering, with a neighbourhood celebration called Troll-o-Ween marking the anniversary of the 1990 unveiling on October 31. From the Troll it is a fifteen-minute walk down the hill to Fremont's centre, with bookshops, the Fremont Sunday Market when in season, and the Lenin statue on Evanston Avenue.