photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

The "Wishing Bench" at Ninth and Delaware streets in East Lawrence is pictured Sunday, Aug. 15, 2021, after an overnight fire.

Updated at 1 p.m. Sunday

East Lawrence residents awoke to disbelief and grief Sunday morning as they discovered that someone had burned down a beloved community art installation at Ninth and Delaware Streets known as the Wishing Bench.

The installation had been at the corner in the Warehouse Arts District for years. It featured a “wishing” bench on a platform surrounded by decorations and other items that people left. It invited passersby to rest a moment, make a wish, contribute to the art. Its appearance changed frequently with the pieces left by the community.

Patty Pasley, an East Lawrence resident at the site Sunday, was visibly upset by the overnight destruction. She has lived in the area for eight years and remembers when the bench “was just a porch swing.”

“This is a place that I’ve come to wish, to think, to dream, to honor the art,” she said.

“I’ve watched as people added things over the years — all sorts of unusual things. I remember once someone left an Indian-Mexican blanket to make the bench more comfortable,” she said.

Tony Peterson, an East Lawrence resident who has been documenting the evolution of the bench for about a year — framing the bench weekly from the same angle, showing its changing, multicolored variety and whimsy — in all kinds of weather and seasons, on Sunday photographed a charred, skeletal ruin in the bright sun.

“So much is gone now, so many wishes,” he said.

Peterson started photographing the bench last September “without any real plan for how to use the photos.”

“One thing I knew I wanted was to capture it over all four seasons,” he said. He tried to always photograph it “after watching ‘CBS Sunday Morning’ because I wanted the time to always be the same so how it changed over the seasons was reflected.”

Eventually the idea for a photo exhibit developed.

“It’s as much about how the environment around the bench changes as well as what’s on it changes, so the only constant is the structure itself,” he said.

Below is a photo Peterson took before the fire and the one he took Sunday.

photo by: Tony Peterson

East Lawrence resident Tony Peterson has been documenting the Wishing Bench in the Warehouse Arts District for about a year. This is how the bench looked sometime before Sunday’s fire, although its appearance changed almost daily.

photo by: Tony Peterson

East Lawrence resident Tony Peterson has been documenting the Wishing Bench in the Warehouse Arts District for about a year. This is how the bench looked Sunday after an overnight fire.

In September of last year, as the Journal-World reported, a short film about the bench premiered in East Lawrence. The 12-minute film, directed by Marlo Angell, was part of the Rebuilding East Ninth Street public art project.

photo by: Erika Kjorlie Geery

From left, Maxine Nwachukwu, José Faus, Chris Blunk and Jeremy Osbern are pictured behind the scenes during the fall 2019 shoot of the short film “The Wishing Bench.”

Not much is known about the bench’s origins, as the Journal-World reported in 2018 during a fundraising effort to repair the bench after a decade in the weather had degraded its wooden structure. Lane Eisenbart, who led the fundraising effort, said at the time that the property owner, Warehouse Arts District developer Tony Krsnich, had so far allowed the Wishing Bench to remain at the intersection, despite his plans to eventually build a pair of multistory apartment buildings on the site.

The Journal-World has reached out to the Lawrence Police Department and Lawrence-Douglas County Fire Medical for additional details. Lt. David Ernst with LPD told the Journal-World that the fire department responded to the incident and deferred to it for further information. Firefighters at the scene later Sunday would say only that the incident was “under active investigation.”

KT Walsh, the vice president of the East Lawrence Neighborhood Association, noted that the metal framework and some of the bench’s platform were still intact Sunday. She said the bench would make a comeback, either at the present site or elsewhere.

“We are going to restore it, and we may start a fundraiser,” she said. “The fire marshal just called and said we could move it (if need be) once the investigation is over.” Although no cause has been determined, she said a fire investigator told her it could have been caused by someone who dropped a cigarette and that the department was also looking for evidence of accelerants and other possible causes.

Walsh said that other incidents had occurred in the area overnight — a torn-down art box at Ninth and Pennsylvania streets and a couple of smashed car windows in a nearby parking lot — but she did not know whether they were related to the fire.

She said neighbors had come out to look after the site and help clean up — “People are showing up because they care about it” — but firefighters had asked them to keep a distance pending the investigation.

photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Lawrence-Douglas County Fire Medical was at Ninth and Delaware streets Sunday, August 15, 2021, to investigate the overnight fire that consumed the Wishing Bench.

photo by: Journal-World File

The Wishing Bench at Ninth and Delaware, pictured in 2018, when funds were being raised to repair its structure.