On a vacant lot on Madras Street, 185 white-painted chairs stand in the open air, one for each person killed in the February 2011 earthquake. They are arranged in rough clusters, not rows, and they vary wildly — office chairs, dining chairs, rocking chairs, a child's plastic seat, a wheelchair. The diversity of the chairs is the point. Each person was different; each death was specific.
The memorial is unmaintained in the formal sense, which gives it a particular kind of life. People leave flowers on individual chairs. The paint is weathered. Occasionally someone adds something or rearranges something. It is one of those rare public memorials that feels honest rather than official, and it hits harder than almost anything in a more permanent material would. Allow yourself more time than you think you need.