It's been ten years since we first wrote about the dearth of female historical statues in NYC. Back in 2009, there were 145 male historical statues, and 5 female historical statues; ten years later that number has not changed, but there is progress being made through NYC First Lady Chirlane McCray's She Built NYC initiative.
Last year McCray announced that a statue of Rep. Shirley Chisholm—the first black woman elected to Congress, and the first woman ever to run for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination for president of the United States—would go up in Prospect Park in 2020. Now McCray has revealed the next four monuments that will go up in honor of "the trailblazing women who have helped shape New York City." Together, these will bring the She Built NYC initiative to all five boroughs.
In addition to Chisholm, statues honoring Billie Holiday, Elizabeth Jennings Graham, Dr. Helen Rodríguez Trías, and Katherine Walker will be installed throughout the city as permanent public artwork. Here's the breakdown of the statues and their placement:
- Billie Holiday, Queens. In her home borough near Queens Borough Hall. Holiday lived in Addisleigh Park and later in Flushing.
- Elizabeth Jennings Graham, Manhattan: In the Vanderbilt Avenue Corridor near Grand Central Terminal.
- Dr. Helen Rodríguez Trías, the Bronx. At St. Mary’s Park.
- Katherine Walker, Staten Island. At the Staten Island Ferry Landing.
- Shirley Chisholm, Brooklyn. At the Parkside entrance to Prospect Park.
"We cannot tell the story of New York City without recognizing the invaluable contributions of the women who helped build and shape it," McCray, joined by former Deputy Mayor Alicia Glen, told reporters at a press conference today. "Public monuments should tell the full history and inspire us to realize our potential—not question our worth. In honoring these four trailblazers today, New Yorkers will have the opportunity to see powerful women who made history receive the recognition they deserve." The full press conference can be seen here:
Executive Director of women.nyc, Faye Penn, noted that they are "tremendously proud to be recognizing this diverse and dynamic set of women with monuments celebrating their accomplishments and thank the public for answering the call to help make us a fairer city for all women."
These new monuments will be commissioned through the Department of Cultural Affairs’ Percent for Art process. According to the press release, "This inclusive process builds community engagement and input into the artist selection and artwork design process. The construction of these monuments will be funded through the $10 million the Department of Cultural Affairs has committed over the next four years to commissioning new permanent public monuments and commemorations."
Artist selection will begin later this year, and conclude in 2020. The monuments are expected to go up in 2021 and 2022.
Meanwhile, there are still zero real women represented in Central Park, but that will change in 2020, when a statue honoring Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Susan B. Anthony is installed. All in all, this brings the tally to 145 men, and 12 women.
You can see the current female historical statues around NYC above, they include Joan of Arc, Golda Meir, Gertrude Stein, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Harriet Tubman. (More than a dozen statues depicting fictional women around NYC were modeled by real woman Audrey Munson, often referred to as "American's First Supermodel.")
The new statue coming to Central Park in 2020. (Glenn Castellano, New-York Historical Society)
There has been some criticism around the She Built NYC decision-making process, Hyperallergic reported earlier this year, with some members of the city advisory committee saying their recommendation to honor groups “rather than individuals" was ignored.
City College of New York art historian Harriet Senie, who served on the committee, told Hyperallergic that the committee wanted to stress that "the salient point that history is never changed by one individual alone, that changes take time, and that women are known to work collaboratively... The whole process was a charade. I really believe it is important to reconsider our memorial paradigms as well as mayoral appointed commissions whose recommendations are ignored. It suggests they are, in fact, a charade for the mayor to hide behind, implying his final decision was one that came from these appointed bodies when in fact it did not."
Here are brief bios of the four newly announced women, provided by She Built NYC:
Billie Holiday (born Eleanora Fagan Gough, 1915-1959) is one of the most celebrated jazz singers of all time. Her career helped to define the New York “swing sing” jazz scene and to challenge racial barriers. One of the first black women to sing with a white orchestra, she struck out on her own to win fame with Strange Fruit, a powerful protest song about lynching, named by Time Magazine “the song of the century” (1999). Her career was recognized by four posthumous Grammys and induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Elizabeth Jennings Graham (1827-1901) challenged racial segregation a century before the modern Civil Rights movement. On July 16, 1854, the 27-year-old schoolteacher boarded a streetcar that did not accept African-Americans as passengers. When the conductor confronted her, she refused to leave until forcibly removed by the police. Graham used her education and connections in New York’s middle-class black community to publish an account of the incident and sue the Third Avenue Railroad Company, the conductor, and the driver. The judge ruled in her favor, holding that “a colored person… had the same rights as others.” In addition to winning $225 in damages, Jennings’s case took the first step toward ending transit segregation in New York. By 1860 all of the city's streetcar lines were open to African-Americans. In her later years, Jennings continued to teach, helping to found the first kindergarten in the city for black children.
Dr. Helen Rodríguez Trías (1929-2001) was a pioneer in pediatrics and public health. Over the course of her career, Dr. Rodríguez Trías focused on issues including reproductive rights and HIV/AIDS care and prevention; she did this work on behalf of women and children, especially those in poor and minority communities. She became the medical director of the New York State Department of Health’s AIDS Institute and the first Latinx director of the American Public Health Association (APHA). Dr. Rodríguez Trías was a recipient of the Presidential Citizens Medal. Among her greatest legacies are shaping regulations that govern informed content for sterilizations and empowering low-income and minority women through the women’s health movement.
Katherine Walker (1838-1941), the keeper of the Robbins Reef Lighthouse for nearly three decades, is credited with saving the lives of at least 50 people and maintaining the light that guided countless ships to safe passage through Kill Van Kull, the shipping channel between Staten Island and Bayonne, New Jersey. One of the few female lighthouse keepers in American history, she broke barriers in a male-dominated field and raised her two children at the lighthouse, rowing them back and forth to attend school on Staten Island. Walker’s story sheds light on the largely untold history of women working in New York City’s thriving marine ecosystem. Her efforts contributed to the infrastructure of the shipping industry, which was the lifeblood of the city’s economy for centuries.
