Nailed It

If you happen to drive through Lewiston’s Tree Streets neighborhood, you might notice a 15 foot tall hammer sticking out of the ground on the corner of Pine and Howe. Surrounding the hammer are a bunch of “nails” sticking out of the ground that function as chairs. That is actually a public art installation called “Nailed It” by artist William Josiah Glover Jr. It was erected in November 2022 and is a symbol of rebuilding and development in a vulnerable neighborhood.

The piece is one of the public art projects commissioned by the City of Lewiston as part of their Choice Neighborhoods initiative. The art is part of a larger effort to beautify and “activate” neighborhood gateways and city-owned vacant lots.

Choice Neighborhood Initiative

The public art project was funded as part of an initial 2018 $1.3 million U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Choice Neighborhood Planning and Action Grant. Lewiston then applied for the much larger and more competitive $30 million Choice Neighborhoods Initiative grant which they received in May 2021. “The Choice Neighborhoods program supports locally driven strategies that address struggling neighborhoods with distressed HUD housing through a comprehensive approach.”

Lewiston is actually the smallest city ever to receive Choice Initiative funding, reflecting just how bad the housing and neighborhood situation had gotten. Other finalists for the grant were Detroit, Cleveland, Camden, N.J., and Fort Myers, Florida.

Calling all Artists

With the initial funding, Lewiston approved 6 public art installations, each with a budget of $35,000. A call went out for projects that paid homage to the neighborhood. The submissions needed to support themes of “growth, revitalization, trees, community connections, and transformation.” They solicited proposals from artists and a committee then chose the lucky winners. The pieces were installed throughout 2022.

The Artist behind the Hammer

The artist behind “Nailed It” is William Glover, a custom metal fabricator who owns Rockport Steel.

His company appears to do a wide variety of metalwork, including structures, railings, stairs, fences, docks, boats, signs, and even sculptures. I found photos of other hammers that they have installed. They clearly know how to weld.

The Location

The city acquired the corner lot at Pine and Howe in 2016 when taxes weren’t paid. They promptly demolished the decrepit house that had been standing there creating an empty lot. “Nailed It” isn’t really intended to stay there forever. It is meant to be a welcoming sign of rebirth and revitalization and will have to be removed/moved? if the lot ever sells.

The Tree Streets Neighborhood

“Nailed It” is in the Tree Streets neighborhood, which was named because, well, lots of the streets are named after trees (Pine, Ash, Walnut, Birch, Maple, Spruce).

Tree Streets is also one of the most disadvantaged communities in the state of Maine with more than 40 percent of the residents living in poverty. The neighborhood is full of recent immigrants and has the densest population of kids under the age of five in the entire state. The wave of immigration began with the arrival of 1,000 Somali refuges in the early 2000s who were fleeing Civil War.

Apartments were cheap in the Tree Streets neighborhood and Lewiston quickly found themselves in a bit of an immigration boom, reversing decades of population decline in the city. The housing available to these immigrants had been neglected for years and was in dreadful shape. Sadly, Tree Streets now has the highest rate of childhood lead poisoning in the state and is afflicted with a pretty high crime rate.

Former Lewiston Mayor Robert MacDonald got himself in a bit of trouble in a 2012 BBC interview when he said that the then-6,000 or so Somali immigrants in the city should “leave their culture at the door” and assimilate to American culture. That brought national attention and calls for the Mayor’s resignation.

Lot For Sale – Hammer Included?

In 2023, Lewiston issued an RFP inviting proposals to purchase the 143 Pine Street property. It was listed as a 0.107 acre lot and assessed at $16,800. All proposals were rejected because they didn’t align with the Choice Neighborhood plan. The city rated those responses “using a matrix criteria of 50% in compliance with the alignment with the Choice Neighborhood spirit, 30% on the proposed development timeline and project, and 20% on the price offered for the property.”

But in December 2023, it appears that the City Council voted 7-0 to award the property to a woman who submitted a bid of $7,000 to “relocate and establish a comprehensive market and/or laundromat.” She was given 1 year to secure financing and 3 years to complete the project.

AI hoax

In February, 2026, an AI-altered image made the rounds in social media showing that the hammer had fallen over and was covered by snow. The usual flurry of snarky Facebook comments followed. Lewiston Mayor Carl Sheline decided to try to squash the chatter by posting a picture of the actual hammer still standing stating “our hammer stands strong.”