New Central Park Statue To Commemorate Women's Suffrage Movement

CENTRAL PARK, NY — Central Park has nearly 30 commemorative statues. Among those honored in New York's most famous park are war heroes, artists, musicians, writers and even animals such as the heroic sled dog Balto.

But among all the monuments, there isn't one dedicated to a woman who wasn't a fictional character.

That changes in three years when women's rights movement leaders Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony are memorialized on the Central Park Mall to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment, which extended the right to vote to women nationwide.

City and state officials, women's rights groups and two New York City girl scout troops gathered Monday — the 100th anniversary of women's suffrage in New York state — at the future location of the Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony Woman Suffrage Movement Monument to celebrate breaking the "bronze ceiling."

The statue will be the first new commemorative monument in Central Park since 1965, Parks Department Commissioner Mitchell Silver said Monday. Of the city parks system's 850 monuments, only four currently commemorate the achievements of historic women, Silver said.

"Central Park hasn't seen a new commemorative sculpture in more than half a century, so it's fitting that we finally break the bronze ceiling with this long-deserved, long-awaited monument to the women's suffrage movement," Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer said. "Now is the moment when it's most important that we honor Stanton, Anthony, and the entire movement of women both known and unknown who fought for suffrage."

On Monday, the Parks Department officially commenced a project to build the statue, beginning with the release of a Request For Proposals — a process in which the city will solicit bids from state designers. The Parks Department is also still in the process of raising funds for the statue, Silver said.

The statue is commissioned and endowed by the Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony Statue Fund, which was created years ago to campaign for a statue honoring women in Central Park. The fund is supported by both public and private gifts, including a $500,000 grant from insurance company New York Life, $100,000 in funding from Borough President Brewer's office and $35,000 in funding from City Council Member Helen Rosenthal. The Girl Scout Troops 3484 and 3482 will also help raise money for the statue through cookie sales.

While the monument will depict Stanton and Anthony, it will honor all the women who fought for the right to vote and continue to fight for rights such as equal pay for equal work, Pam Elam, president of the statue fund, said Monday.

"We are here to move history forward. Our project honors New Yorkers Stanton and Anthony as well as all the women who fought for the largest nonviolent revolution in the history of this nation when over half the population was enfranchised," Elam said. "It’s an instant history lesson. It’s an examination of how social change comes about. But most of all, it’s about completing the journeys toward justice of the valiant women who came before us and achieving the full equality for women that they were denied."

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