1. Toynbee Tiles and House of Hades
This story is part 1 (of 5) that ultimately leads to “A Field Guide to Street Tiles and Other Literal Street Art of the Queen City.”
The most recent record on the map was from just over a decade ago: 2006. I scribbled down the locations in my notebook and spent nearly an entire lunch break wandering and coming up short until I spotted one near a crosswalk. Maybe the info had been off a bit; I wasn't expecting to find anything here. As traffic subsided, I jogged out to the middle of the road and knelt down while an idling cab driver eyed me suspiciously.
Staring down at the asphalt, I had been expecting to read these cryptic words:
TOYNBEE IDEA
IN MOVIE 2001
RESURRECT DEAD
ON PLANET JUPITER
Instead, what I found said:
HOUSE OF HADES+
COLOSSUS OF ROADS
GOTHAM EXILE IN
SURREALVILLE 2011
I was taken aback by the unexpected version of an already mysterious message and didn't have too long to think about it before traffic resumed and I ran back to the curb. After work that day, I found more with the help of 5chw4r7z and then via Facebook and Twitter: several folks offered insight and clues as to what these things might be.
The subject hadn’t come to my attention until recently, but as soon as I first read about “Toynbee tiles”—I was hooked. What I assumed was initially just eclectic, guerrilla street art turned out to be something much more.
A standard Toynbee tile.
Image via Wikipedia.
The tiles themselves are generally defined as "messages of unknown origin found embedded in asphalt streets." Reports of them go back to the early 1980s and they’ve been primarily located in major cities throughout the East Coast and Midwest, with the strongest concentration found in Philadelphia. The vast majority feature a central message (although there are the occasional variations):
TOYNBEE IDEA
IN MOVIE 2001
RESURRECT DEAD
ON PLANET JUPITER
In some cases, the tiles will features side notes that make reference to politics, media, conspiracies, and various other topics.
A Toynbee tile as seen in Cincinnati in 2009 at the corner of 6th and Walnut Streets.
Image via Denny Gibson.
I’m certainly not the first to take notice of the tiles, attempt to document them, or report on them. Perhaps the people who have done that best are Justin Duerr, Steve Weinik, and Colin Smith—the producers and key figures behind the 2011 documentary “Resurrect Dead.” The film isn’t solely about the tiles and the mystique surrounding them, but also about the filmmakers and their journey. Cincinnati is briefly featured along with a reference to a 2001 story by City Beat. By the time of the film’s debut, hundreds of these tiles had been found and documented across the country with the Queen City known to have once sported at least three. The film also lays out a strong case for who may have been behind the tiles, as well as, their supposed intentions.
My goal here isn’t to spoil the movie or minimize its story into a mere summary, but there are certain details that are essential for context. So, I’ve attempted to respectfully choose what information is referenced here. Ultimately, the film is well worth your time.
• • •
At one point in their research, the documentarians discover a 1983 column in the Philadelphia Inquirer entitled, “Theories: Wanna Run That One By Me Again?” It’s within this writing that journalist Clark DeLeon recalled a conversation with a man named James Morasco—an individual inspired by the ideas of British historian Arnold J. Toynbee (who believed civilization must respond to challenges in order to prosper), and filmmaker Stanley Kubrick (the man behind 2001: A Space Odyssey, which depicts a manned space mission to Jupiter). DeLeon also recounts how Morasco was sincere in his belief that “the planet Jupiter would be colonized by bringing all the people on Earth who had ever died back to life and then changing Jupiter’s atmosphere to allow them to live.”
In time, it’s determined that “James Morasco” is likely a pseudonym used by a reclusive citizen of Philadelphia—the same person linked to physical evidence of the tiles. The filmmakers come to find several “prototypes” in the streets near this man’s home and also uncover accounts that he may have once been the person behind a series of eclectic short wave radio broadcasts that espoused ideas similar to those found in the tiles. Although all attempts to contact this man go unanswered, his Philadelphia address is directly referenced within a tile located in Chile. Other evidence suggests that this man may have had assistance from a neighbor who worked for Conrail—a company whose freight tracks not only served all of the American cities where tiles appeared, but had business dealings in South America (the only area outside of the United States to have boasted original Toynbee tiles).
One of the film’s key figures, Justin Duerr, had been documenting the tiles since the early days of the internet. At one point, he came across what’s been dubbed “the manifesto tile.” This specific tile goes into far more detail about an alleged conspiracy within the media and government to silence the tiler.
“When back home Inquirer [presumed to be the Philadelphia Inquirer] got union goons from their own employees union to send down a ‘sports journalist’ who, with baseball bat bashed in lights and windows of neighborhood as men outside my house. They are stationed there still. Waiting for me.”
It’s posited (and somewhat affirmed) in the film that the tiler was deeply passionate about this idea of bringing the dead back to life on another planet, that they likely saw it as the kind of grand challenge Arthur Toynbee had hoped humanity would rise to meet. Something that might seem like Kubrick-esque science fiction, but could be achieved if only the powers-that-be weren’t trying to keep it secret.
Hence the need for clandestine communication via the medium of linoleum mosaics adhered into publics streets.
Now—for lack of a better term—I get that, that all sounds “crazy.” It’s easy to understand how someone might be skeptical of a such a seemingly absurd idea. In my opinion, however, there’s a different understanding that can come from all of this—even if it’s not a literal interpretation of the tiles.
It varies from person to person—and maybe there’s some who can say outright they’ve never felt this way—but odds are that everyone has experienced what it’s like to be repeatedly misunderstood or that that they must go to extreme lengths to communicate. Whether you believe the dead can be resurrected in the far reaches of our solar system or simply struggle coming to terms with your own existence—there’s a sense of humanity that comes from this particular thought around the tiles. Maybe the tiler felt his ideas could lead to a physical form of afterlife—a technological version of the “heaven” alluded to in so many religions. Maybe this was his way to cheat death or his way of uniting humanity. Perhaps in his mind—this breakthrough, idealistic proposal and hope for the future has been dismissed or intentionally covered up by those with sinister gains.
No matter what the intended message may have been, I feel that most people can certainly empathize with the struggle of simply wanting to be heard.
The 2011 documentary does a great job of making this point, and while they never were able to make contact with the tiler—the aforementioned Justin Duerr summed it all up best when recounting how he believed to have once crossed paths with him.
“For years and years I wanted to talk to this person and for years and years I wanted to solve the mystery. But the thing was, that when I ran into him on the bus, I didn’t want to do it. You know, it’s not that I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I decided not to bring myself to do it, because I felt like it was not the right thing to do. You can’t force somebody to open up to you. You can’t force somebody to decide that they’re gonna share things with you. I need to know when to let go. I had a moment of emotional and intellectual clarity about where I stood with the story. Let them go in peace on their way and I would go in peace on my way and that would be it.”
• • •
Tiles still appear in the streets these days. They take a unique process to create which utilizes a combination of linoleum, asphalt sealer, and tar paper. Once the tile is manufactured, it can be simply laid in the street where the pressures of traffic, the passage of time, and the heat of the sun will eventually adhere it into the asphalt. The range of newly appearing tiles has expanded beyond the original Midwest/East Coast/South America area, but many of the newer ones are clearly imitations. Which is probably quite alright with the original tiler since he often featured side messages encouraging viewers to create tiles of their own. At the same time, the filmmakers feel confident that several of the ones popping up in recent years are still the work of the original tiler.
You won’t find any in Cincinnati though, at least not any that champion the original “Jupiter” message. Once sporting three, all have disappeared (two were in the path of new streetcar tracks, another at the heart of a well traveled block).
There are other tiles though:
July 2017 photograph of a "House of Hades" tile in downtown Cincinnati.
“House of Hades” tiles initially began appearing in Buffalo and have since found their way to many of the same locales as the original Toynbee tiles. While the medium and technique may be the same, the message differs. Cincinnati once had at least five tiles from House of Hades, but is now down to three as of this writing. Like their Toynbee counterparts, these linoleum mosaics are often right out in the open, but easily overlooked. Here in Cincinnati, the remaining three are all located near crosswalks with heavy pedestrian traffic.
A House of Hades tile seen in a Cincinnati crosswalk.
These newer tiles, with their own theme and visual design, seem to now appear far more regularly than that of the Toynbee variety. Meanwhile, their message and origins haven’t received the same amount of investigative scrutiny or attention as their presumed inspirations. Justin Deurr claims to have met the person behind House of Hades—stating that he wasn't a “copycat,” but rather that it was his “own thing using the same technique.” Unlike the Toynbee tiles, the text of the Hades tiles is far more varied, but most seem to discuss similar sentiments with regard to institutional media.
The Cincinnati tiles have/had the following messages:
No. 1
Main text:
“HOUSE OF HADES
PLAGUE AND FAMINE
TO AMERICAN MEDIA
IN SOCIETY ‘2011”
Other text:
“BUFFALO NEWS, NY POST, PGHPOSTGAZETTE, PHILAINQUIRER- (illegible) SHITOCRATSADISTS.”
“IMPLEMENTING HABITS OF SUBVERSION TO HARVEST YOU ALL TO PRISON.”
No. 2
Main text:
"HOUSE OF HADES+
COLOSSUS OF ROADS
BRAKEMAN BRUSH IN
SURREALVILLE ‘2011"
Other text:
“GOTHAM EXILE”
“LT. LC SLUCID”
No. 3
Main text:
“HOUSE OF HADES+
COLOSSUS OF ROADS
GOTHAM EXILE IN
SURREALVILLE ‘2011"
Other text:
“GO DEVIL BRUSH HOGS”
A now-gone, fourth Hades tile was documented by 5chw4r7z in 2016:
No. 4
Main text:
“HOUSE OF HADES
WHO WILL PAY FOR
ALL THEY HAVE DONE
IN SOCIETY ‘2011”
Other text:
“ONE MAN VS MEDIA’S
PUTRID PATRICIANS”
A fifth Hades tile was located near, and saved by, the Contemporary Arts Center during some roadwork. As seen in the below image from the museum’s Twitter account in 2015: this one is visually distinct from the others in that it features a pair of legs wrapped around the text.
No. 5
Main text:
“HOUSE OF HADES
ONE MAN VERSUS
AMERICAN MEDIA
IN SOCIETY ‘2011”
Other text:
"THIS IS A GAME YOU WILL LOSE"
The Hades tiles will often have their text stylized in a way the mimics the original Toynbee variants. However, HOH’s work often deviates with the inclusion of imagery and graphics. The sentiments expressed and style used in the Cincinnati tiles are similar to other HOH examples seen around the country.
A House of Hades tile can be seen in context just below the front of the white vehicle.
Oftentimes, these tiles are aimed at accusing the media of having a destructive agenda, or, warning the reader that the media and its “iron fist” will be destroyed. In some cases, the text will read that the tiles are made “from the ground bones of dead journalists.” Occasionally, they’ll make reference to “the resurrection of Toynbee’s idea in society.”
A House of Hades tile seen in Cincinnati.
When the Resurrect Dead documentary premiered at Philadelphia’s IFC Theatre in 2011: two fresh Hades tiles were found out front. Photographer Steve Weinik from the film maintains an ongoing website about the whole subject and has noted several HOH tiles popping up in recent years. In terms of delving deeper into this newer mystery, some of the Cincinnati tiles offered clues: the simplistic graphic of a cowboy and the words “Colossus of Roads.”
A commenter on QC/D’s Facebook page (thanks, Elizabeth!) noted that the cowboy graphic at the right side of tile No. 3 is known as “Colossus of Roads”—the same name that appears in the text of several tiles seen in this post. The moniker has long appeared on railcars and is placed by renown folk artist buZ blurr. A third generation veteran of the freight rail industry, buZ’s moniker is stylistically designed as a profile of another famous moniker: that of the elusive Bozo Texino. Both monikers were featured in Bill Daniel’s 2005 film about the graffiti left on boxcars by transients and rail workers. Two of the local HOH tiles also feature the word “Surrealville,” which I’ve been told is another name for “The Principality of buZ” (a.k.a. blurr’s workshop).
When researching, I wasn’t able to gain much further insight about House of Hades or their collaboration with Colossus of Roads; just that buZ blurr has been known to say: “the medium is the message.”
Detail of a moniker which accompanies one of the Cincinnati House of Hades tiles. “Rien” is French for “nothing.”
The anti-media, anti-establishment message of HOH seems reminiscent of the Dada movement in the early 20th century and the use of tiles placed throughout wide-ranging geographic locations evokes the culture of moniker art. Both the tiles and monikers are often right in our midst, but are easily overlooked when passing by. The art is therefore available primarily to the curious—those willing to look further and listen to a voice attempting to be heard. While the streets of Cincinnati and many other cities have lost their original Toynbee tiles, House of Hades appears to still be going strong in a new chapter. One that links several stories and touches up what the aforementioned photographer and artist Bill Daniel once described as “various social margins.”
A House of Hades tile as seen in Cincinnati, July 2017.
Perhaps House of Hades is truly the “resurrection of Toynbee’s idea” after all?
Special thanks to 5chw4r7z, Denny Gibson, buZ blurr, the Contemporary Arts Center, and all the folks on Reddit/Facebook/Twitter who helped with this story.
Next Chapter:
When one of Cincinnati’s “House of Hades”street tiles seemed marked for death—not all ended up being lost.
All “Street Tile” Posts:
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