Lincoln Park mural has an old school vibe except for the pigeon wearing a hardhat

The mural on a three-story brick building at 815 W. Armitage Ave. evokes an elegant, almost timeless feeling.

Purple, red, yellow and pink flowers seem to burst forth from the wall, among them a sunflower spilling from a golden frame.

Within a light-blue backdrop, white lines subtly mark the borders of the city of Chicago and its neighborhoods.

At one side is an image of an old-time street lamp with two candles inside.

There’s a Victorian quality to much of the mural, perhaps appropriate since records show the building dates to the late 1800s.

Except for one thing: What is the deal with that pigeon atop the street light wearing a hardhat?

Robert Herguth / Sun-Times

For starters, the real estate company that’s based there and that commissioned the artwork is involved with a lot of construction projects, says Amanda Stamelos of Coordinate Properties.

And the mural faces an alley, so a pigeon seemed kind of appropriate, Stamelos says.

Also, Danny Torres, the artist who created the mural, just likes pigeons. His Instagram has photos of his other artwork that includes a painting of a plump pigeon wearing a Bulls hat and a mural showing a pigeon in flight next to rapper Snoop Dogg.

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“Most people look at them as vermin, but I think they’re beautiful, and there’s more than meets the eye,” says Torres, who was born in Ecuador and grew up in Portage Park and Humboldt Park. “I like pigeons because I can kind of relate. I’m an immigrant, and sometimes we’re looked down upon.”

Also, he says of pigeons: “They kind of represent, in my eyes, the common man. I also do like their resilience.”

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Stamelos says the mural gives people passing by a chance to “look at something besides a brick wall” that they might find pleasing and take meaning from.

She says the candles inside the street lamp represent her and her husband, and the flowers were from a photo of blooms from a Lincoln Park farmers market. The flowers were already past their prime when the photo was taken.

Torres says the “significance is the passing of time and the changing of seasons.”

Click on the map below for a selection of Chicago-area murals