The Passage

“The Trail of Tears, a catastrophic event in history, passed through this place. A great many Cherokees perished on the Trail and this journey will never be forgotten. Through perseverance the Cherokee people survived. We continue to strive forward keeping our culture alive through strong family values and the retention of our Arts, our Traditions, and our Language.

To truly honor the memories of our ancestors, past and present, we felt it necessary to create a contemporary public art that expresses true cultural relevance and establishes an aesthetic that inspires an appreciation of Chattanooga’s artistic past, with narrative insight from an indigenous perspective.

It is our team’s honor and privilege to complete the circle begun by our ancestors so man years ago by bringing back to this area the vitality and visual strengths of our Cherokee forefathers’ artwork. Through this art installation, we feel as though we are symbolically returning to our ancestral homeland.”

Team Gadugi, 2005
The Design Team named this area The Passage, primarily to try to keep it from being popularly labeled as a tunnel, a term with unattractive connotations. As time went on, The Passage came to have layers of meaning, not just the passage under Riverfront Parkway, but the passage of time and the passage of the Cherokee from the Southeast and the passage of return of a culture that Southeastern Native American art would bring.

The Passage itself is approximately 300 feet long from First Street to the river. It is 12 feet wide at the top and 70 feet wide at the bottom. The east and west walls are approximately 26 feet high at the bottom with a 35 foot grade change from the top to the bottom.

Four different areas comprise The Passage and each has a distinctive water feature. The first area is located at the entrance to The Passage which begins at the Aquarium Plaza. At the top of the space are seven recessed brass “doors” or six foot high indentations in the west wall, spaced six feet apart. Drops of water drip down from the top of each door and form a runnel along the base of the doors and into The Passage. They symbolize the fact that the Trail of Tears started at the doors of the homes of Cherokee people.

The second area widens out between the east and west wall and consists of seven landings with stairs in between. On the charcoal grey west wall at each landing is one of the six foot diameter glazed ceramic disks produced by the artists. The runnel water feature becomes a tumbling cascade of water down the stairs beginning at the second landing and this water feature widens to take up more than half of the floor of The Passage at the bottom.

The final landing extends under Riverfront Parkway. Here the cascade of water enters a l pool of water 18 inches deep measuring 55 x 40 feet. Imbedded in the floor of this pool is an 8 x 12 foot stainless steel cutout of a water spider from a Cherokee origin myth. Water in this pool is recycled back to the top of The Passage. The ceiling of this space, underneath Riverfront Parkway, is clad in stainless steel and contains recessed light fixtures.

Emerging from under Riverfront Parkway a 20 foot wide sidewalk runs east and west along the river’s edge. The river is approximately four feet deep here and from it seven huge jets of river water rise into the sky angled at various heights, the highest being over 60 feet high at top water volume. These jets are visible from the top of The Passage and from east and west along the waterfront, helping to draw visitors into the space.

Along the north wall facing the jets of water and the river is perhaps the most dramatic part of the public art installation. This grey clad wall is 23 feet high at the base of The Passage and angles upward until it meets the level of Riverfront Parkway above. On this wall seven stainless steel cutouts of traditional stickball players from eight to twelve feet high play around the stickball pole and are trailed by the seven stars of the Pleiades constellation. From here the visitor can walk along the river’s edge or go up a set of stairs to Riverfront Parkway.