This Founding Father no longer has a place in the seat of local government.
The city’s Public Design Commission voted unanimously Monday to exile the statue of Thomas Jefferson from City Hall to the New-York Historical Society.
The commission— comprised of mayoral appointees — approved the statue’s removal to the private museum even after the group’s president and the members of the public expressed concerns about the artwork not being accessible to the masses in its new home.
During a virtual meeting Monday, PDC director Keri Butler said a Historical Society trustee had agreed to donate a plaque that would provide historical context to the statue at the museum.
Butler said the commission overcame concerns about the artwork moving from a public to a private location because while the Historical Society charges a $22 admission, it does not turn anyone away for inability to pay.
The likeness of the nation’s third president has resided at City Hall for the past 187 years. Its departure was prompted by some City Council members who objected to Jefferson’s as a slave owner.
Members of the council’s Black, Latino and Asian Caucus demanded after the vote Monday that the statue be moved by the next body-wide meeting on Nov. 23.
“Each day it is allowed to linger there serves as a reminder to our members of the horrors perpetrated against Blacks and Indigenous Peoples by revered figures – like Jefferson – who were instrumental in America’s creation, but also known practitioners of slavery that espoused white supremacist belief,” the caucus said in a statement.
But other members, including Staten Island Republican Councilman Joe Borelli, called the move misguided.
“This is a vote to sideline history,” Borelli told The Post.
“That Jefferson is holding the bill of rights in the very statue is lost on those who have benefitted from his contribution,” Borelli said.
A so-called compromise solution– to move the statue from the City Council Chambers to the Governor’s Room at City Hall where there’s a desk that once belonged to fellow Founding Father George Washington– didn’t pan out. Butler cited “lack of space and circulation concerns” in the largely ceremonial space.
A Historical Society spokesman explained where the statue would go.
“The statue of Thomas Jefferson will be initially displayed in the main gallery on our first floor. After six months, the statue will be moved to a prominent location in our Library Reading Room, which is free and open to the public,” the rep said.
“In both locations, the statue will be given appropriate historical context, including details of Thomas Jefferson’s complicated legacy — his contributions as a founder and draftsman of the Declaration of Independence and the contradiction between his vision of human equality and his ownership of enslaved people — and the statue’s original purpose as a tribute to Jefferson’s staunch defense of freedom of religion and separation of church and state,” she said.
