Monuments For Tampa Riverwalk Unveiled

Sculptor Steven Dickey and Vice President of the Historical Monument Trail Committee Steve Anderson unveiled six busts that will be installed at six different points along the Tampa Riverwalk on Thursday.

The busts will be cast in bronze in the coming months and are set to be put in place this December with subsequent projects to follow in the coming years. For Dickey, the opportunity to put his stamp on a city that he has spent his life in is an honor.

"To have a project of this size with such a big group of statues that allows me to go all the way back to the Native American cultures is great," Dickey said. "It's nice to have this kind of effect on a city that you call home."

Clearwater native Dickey has comprised several other statues around town including the Phil Esposito statue outside the Tampa Bay Times Forum. A project of this magnitude, however, has taken up a substantial chunk of his time and energy.

"I've been working on these for the last six months, which isn't a lot of time," Dickey said. "We've got another few months of work with the bronzing and finishing them off. I've done a lot of full figures around town so I was looking forward to this one because it's an ongoing project and because it's just the bust pieces for now."

Anderson is the visionary behind much of the artwork that will grace the Riverwalk, which will start by the Water Works building just north of downtown and stretch all the way around downtown heading toward Ybor City where the statue of Vicente Martinez Ybor will sit.

"We've raised enough private capitol right off the bat to develop this project through the first year," Anderson said. "Since then we've raised an additional $100,000 and the county preservation committee awarded a $120,000 grant. So currently we have enough money in hand to develop the first three years worth of monuments."

Anderson's plans go far beyond busts. The second phase includes a second round of Tampa honorees to join the first made of Henry B. Plant, Clara C. Frye, Eleanor McWilliams Chamberlain, Captain James McKay, Ybor and Florida's first people, mound building Native Americans. After the second round of honorees, Anderson's plan is to create a monument to key moments in Tampa's history, although the details of that project have not been worked out.

"Our selection committee is looking at five or six major events in Tampa's history," Anderson said. "We'll still have to raise funds for that but we're going to have some fun with the community and get local residents to vote on which ones they want to see built first. We plan on announcing that plan in 2013 and would like to erect our first major statue in 2014."

After ten years of work on the Riverwalk, Anderson is ready to see the art and history side of the project come together to create a Tampa experience the city has been lacking for too long.

"Wherever I travel around the country I see monuments in every city that tell the story of that place," Anderson said. "I've always felt that Tampa hasn't done a very good job of honoring the people that brought us here, but this project is going to change that."