Last month a beloved piece of public art was removed by the City of Toronto on the northwest corner of Richmond St. and Spadina Ave., when a block-long tape measure painted onto the sidewalk was power washed away. It had been there for more than eight years and seemed a permanent companion to the thimble and buttons artwork that has occupied this corner since 1997.

Called Uniform Measure/Stack, the original artwork by Stephen Cruise also included notches laid into the sidewalk pavement that formed a subtle ruler, and is a wonderful homage to the fashion industry that was once here. In 2006 those notches inspired street artist Victor Fraser to add his oversized tape measure.

Fraser’s original painting went up to the number 36, his then age, but it grew over the years. Fraser’s other work includes honorific sidewalk murals in front of fire and police stations, and a Lest We Forget surrounded by poppies painted in front of the Old City Hall cenotaph.

I interviewed Cruise soon after the tape measure was added eight years ago and he said his first reaction was “it brought a smile to my face” and “it’s different than graffiti, he did a very good job. He painted it meticulously.”

When interviewed by The Star last week, he was still diplomatic, not quite condemning the addition outright, but firm that it was not the intended effect.

An artist’s work is protected from alteration by moral rights, yet every artist working in public knows his or her work will interact with that public in different ways, intended or not.

Part of what made the tape measure special is, like all unsanctioned guerrilla art, it could disappear at any time, adding a bit of drama: “how long will this last?” Works like this make the city seem alive and bubbling with culture that can’t be contained by a bureaucracy. It’s why a place like Berlin is such a thrill to discover, with spontaneous artworks abound, and partly why the artist Banksy gets so much attention.

Official art that appears in our public spaces is generally the work of artists established in their careers whose proposals are selected through a jury process. With a low barrier to entry, nearly anyone can do guerrilla art. The official art is sometimes embraced by the public, like the Henry Moore sculpture in front of the Art Gallery of Ontario, while other expensive works are ignored and unloved, failing to take hold of our hearts or minds. The same can happen with guerrilla art.

Take the case of the DVP rainbow, first painted on a pedestrian tunnel entrance near Lawrence Ave. E in 1972. Now a landmark, it was repeatedly painted over by the North York parks department and the artist responsible, B.C. Johnson, restored it more than 40 times, was arrested four times doing so, and eventually was issued a no-trespassing order in 1994. That’s when community members stepped in and started maintaining it and now it’s been recently restored as part of a larger, official public art project.

Back downtown, just north of the Uniform Measure/Stack thimble is Rush Lane, Toronto’s Graffiti Alley that runs west from Spadina Ave. on the south side of Queen St. W. It’s Toronto’s longest art gallery, with a kilometre of graffiti murals. Though there may be an occasional squished rat to negotiate, it’s where Rick Mercer films his walking rants and even Tourism Toronto lists it as a must see.

Toronto has embraced Nuit Blanche so much now that there’s a proliferation of art events not part of the official program that pop up throughout the night.

Public art works deserve to keep their integrity, but spontaneous art keeps the city alive. Toronto’s beloved tape measure was caught somewhere in that ongoing tension and we lost something quite lovely as a result.

Shawn Micallef writes every Friday about where and how we live in the GTA. Wander the streets with him on Twitter @shawnmicallef