The Skeleton Key
If you didn’t know that Washington, D.C., has an official “key to the city” — the ceremonial icon that mayors typically bestow on visiting dignitaries and homegrown honorees — you’re by no means alone. And that, for the moment at least, suits City Hall just fine.
Soon after he moved into One Judiciary Square two years ago, Mayor Anthony Williams branded the key “tacky” (that’s it above) and asked that it be replaced. By January 22, 1999, an eleven-page memo on “mayoral gifts” had landed on the mayor’s desk, and soon the search was underway in earnest.
Over the years, copies of the key — first minted for Mayor Marion Barry — have gone to such luminaries as Mark “Too Sharp” Johnson, Nelson Mandela, Rosa Parks, Abe Pollin, Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael), Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and Stevie Wonder.
The replacement now under consideration is a stainless-steel “electronic key” with eight notches (one for each of the city’s eight wards), designed by John Dreyfuss, a local sculptor. The mayor’s office estimates the cost of the new-key-to-the-city project at $10,000 — an amount, according to documents furnished to Regardie’s POWER under the Freedom of Information Act, that its annual ceremonial budget “cannot absorb.” Consequently, the Williams administration has turned to the private sector (specifically, the Coca-Cola Company) to help it identify private sponsors for the project.
No word on what would happen to the seventeen “tacky” keys (price: $214 each) still in inventory.
This article originally appeared in the January/February 2001 issue of Regardie’s Power.
Bill Hogan