![\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/bd3e8393f126d2206700466be5fe3f35.jpeg\"\/)
<\/p>\nSome public art is launched with great fanfare at prime locations. Others you have to discover because they are in such obscure locales.<\/p>\n
Such is the case with Greg Snider\u2019s Project For A Public Works Yard, which is located at the northwest corner of National and Chess streets on the False Creek flats, next door to a city works yard, a city gas station, and a fire training facility.<\/p>\n
The sculpture is basically a \u201ccutaway\u201d of typical street infrastructure. It slices the infrastructure in half so you can see what goes on underneath \u2014 what Snider calls \u201cthe infrastructure underground.\u201d<\/p>\n
Above a raised sidewalk sits what you\u2019d normally see, such as a fire hydrant, a storm drain, a parking meter, a street light, and a traffic light.<\/p>\n
Beneath the sidewalk are the guts of the infrastructure \u2014 pipes and valves of many shapes and sizes, most made of cast iron.<\/p>\n
The artwork\u00a0was commissioned for Vancouver\u2019s National Works\u00a0Yard when it opened in\u00a02024, and\u00a0was recently refurbished.<\/p>\n
\u201cI proposed that I would make a piece that represented everything the works yard did,\u201d said Snider, 81, who taught visual art at Simon Fraser University before he retired.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat included all of the engineering, all of the electrical, the parking, and the gas line, (which is) not really the city\u2019s purview. The two types of sewers, the storm drain and the sanitary sewer and the water mains \u2014 everything was going to be represented.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe idea was it\u2019s as if you took this piece and just pulled it up out of the ground and exposed everything that was underneath. The guys who do all this incredible work \u2026 it gets buried. Nobody sees it for 100 years.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Artist Greg Snider with his sculpture project<\/p>\n
Snider was approached by the city\u2019s then-art consultants, Barb Cole and Mike Banwell, to submit a proposal because his art deals with labour and work. The commission was $90,000, but it took a year-end-a-half to build, so he figures he only made about $11,000 after expenses.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had an engineer back in the day\u00a0look\u00a0at it and say,\u00a0\u2018Oh, that must have cost\u00a0$250,000,\u2019\u201d he recalls.\u00a0\u201cThey were\u00a0pretty impressed\u00a0I could do it for\u00a0$90,000.\u201d<\/p>\n
City staff were very helpful putting it together. The site was once the eastern end of False Creek, and he had to sink four piles five storeys into the ground to reach bedrock or solid ground before he could install the piece.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u00a0didn\u2019t\u00a0tell me (that) when I took the commission,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey said, \u2018Oh, by the way, you\u2019re going to have to pile this.\u2019 Fortunately, the pile driver was still on site, so I went and talked to him. They drove four 50-foot piles down underneath.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/f890625326e3cd38b6b5b92c0310b046.jpeg\"\/)
<\/p>\n
Artist Greg Snider\u2019s sculpture<\/p>\n
The city also helped cut many of the pieces so people could see the inner workings of the infrastructure.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve got the fire training facility right here,\u201d he said with a smile. \u201cThey actually don\u2019t have a cutaway hydrant to show their young trainees, so they come over here to look at mine.\u201d<\/p>\n
Everything is\u00a0colour-coded, so you can figure out\u00a0what\u00a0does what.<\/p>\n
\u201cBlue is for water,\u201d he explains, pointing to a large\u00a0pipe under a\u00a0fire hydrant. \u201cSo\u00a0here\u2019s\u00a0a water main, an\u00a0eight-inch\u00a0water main running down the street.\u201d<\/p>\n
The design not only shows what is beneath the street or sidewalk, it also shows where the utilities would branch off to a house.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis brighter yellow is the gas line coming into the house,\u201d he relates.\u00a0\u201cThis\u00a0is\u00a0the\u00a0sanitary\u00a0sewer\u00a0coming back out of the house. That sanitary sewer drops\u00a0down into a pipe,\u00a0which is\u00a0orange.\u201d<\/p>\n
Many of the fittings are from the Terminal City Iron Works on Victoria Drive, a giant industrial complex that closed in 2015. The company is still around, it just moved to Langley.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese valves are made to last,\u201d he said, pointing to a large orange valve with a TC logo. \u201cThis big eight-inch, non-rising stem valve was actually pulled out of a boneyard in Burnaby as a ball of rust. I took it home, cleaned it all up, took it apart, and it works beautifully. There\u2019s nothing wrong with it. Even though they had abandoned it in the boneyard, it could still be put back into service any time.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/d7b7690fffa5c0bc4b06f0d54f218536.jpeg\"\/)
<\/p>\n
Artist Greg Snider\u2019s sculpture<\/p>\n
During the recent restoration, they removed the rusty bits, sandblasted them, and put them back up. The street light had rusted so badly the city asked if he wanted a new one, but Snider said no \u2014 the original had been lowered to about three metres, and a new one would have been too tall.<\/p>\n
One upgrade in the restoration is that the traffic lights now work. At one point, the city thought National street might become a connector to Clark Drive, and nixed a working traffic light in the artwork because it might confuse people. But the connector didn\u2019t happen, and the traffic light is now hooked up.<\/p>\n
With the new St. Paul\u2019s Hospital rising nearby, Snider\u2019s sculpture will soon be exposed to more people. But it\u2019s always been appreciated by city workers.<\/p>\n
\u201cMany of the work yard staff bring their families all the time to admire the artwork,\u201d said Krystal Paraboo, Vancouver\u2019s Head of Public Art.\u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s kind of a way of describing the important and challenging work that they perform. It\u2019s honouring and celebrating them.\u201d<\/p>\n