New York Will Add 4 Statues of Women to Help Fix ‘Glaring’ Gender Gap in Public Art

March 6, 2019
 
By Julia Jacobs

Billie Holiday, the groundbreaking jazz singer, will have a monument depicting her in Queens. Holiday moved to New York with her mother when she was about 13 years old.William Gottlieb/Redferns, via Getty Images

A world-renowned jazz singer. A public health champion. A teacher who helped desegregate New York’s public transit. And a lighthouse keeper who is credited with saving dozens of lives.
On Wednesday, the city announced that these four female historical figures would be honored with statues in New York. The announcement followed a monthslong process seeking to fix what New York’s first lady, Chirlane McCray, called a “glaring” gender imbalance in the city’s streets and parks.
Statues of the four women — Billie Holiday, Helen Rodríguez Trías, Elizabeth Jennings Graham and Katherine Walker — will be placed in the boroughs they once called home. Once the statues are installed, all five boroughs will have at least one public statue of a woman.
Only five female historical figures are depicted in statues in New York City in outdoor public spaces, according to She Built NYC, a city effort to expand representation of women in public art and monuments. All of those statues are in Manhattan, like the sculpture of Eleanor Roosevelt in Riverside Park and the bronze of Harriet Tubman in Harlem.
Last year, the city introduced an initiative to honor women with a significant connection to New York, and it called upon the public to make suggestions. (And New York Times readersmade some recommendations of their own.)
“We pledged to do better by the leaders, achievers and artists who have not gotten their due in the histories written by men,” Ms. McCray said in a speech announcing the new statues. The announcement was meant to coincide with the first week of Women’s History Month.
A statue of Eleanor Roosevelt sits in Riverside Park. Only five female historical figures are currently depicted in statues in New York City.Mark Kauzlarich for The New York Times

A statue of Eleanor Roosevelt sits in Riverside Park. Only five female historical figures are currently depicted in statues in New York City.Mark Kauzlarich for The New York Times
In November, the city announced that it planned to install a statue of Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman to serve in the House of Representatives.
In 1972, Ms. Chisholm became the first woman to seek the Democratic Party’s nomination for president, and the first black woman to seek the presidential nomination of either major party. She died in 2005 at 80.
“Is one new statue of a righteous, working, trailblazing achiever enough?” Ms. McCray said on Wednesday. “No.”
Each new statue is expected to cost between $300,000 and $1 million, and the city has said it is trying to commission female artists to do the work.

Billie Holiday Is Coming to Queens

A monument to Holiday, the famed jazz singer, will be built near Queens Borough Hall, the city said. Born in 1915, Holiday came to New York with her mother when she was about 13 years old.
Holiday helped break down racial barriers in the arts before the civil rights movement. She was one of the first black women to sing with a white orchestra. And her song “Strange Fruit,” a protest song about lynching, continues to shake the public consciousness.

Elizabeth Jennings Graham Will Grace Manhattan

In 1854, Graham, a teacher in her 20s, boarded a New York streetcar without noticing the sign refusing service to black people. When the conductor tried to haul her from the car, she clung onto his coat, and a policeman eventually threw her out onto the sidewalk.
She ultimately sued the Third Avenue Railroad Company and won more than $200 in damages. It was a first step in desegregating New York’s streetcar lines.
A statue of Graham will eventually have a home near Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan.

Helen Rodríguez Trías Returns to the Bronx

Dr. Rodríguez Trías was an outspoken advocate of improved maternal and family heath care. As a pediatrician in New York, she worked with sexually abused children and those susceptible to AIDS.
In the late 1980s, Dr. Rodríguez Trías developed programs for families affected by H.I.V. at the New York State Department of Health’s AIDS Institute. She also became the first Latina director of the American Public Health Association.
The monument of Dr. Rodríguez Trías will be installed in St. Mary’s Park in the Bronx, near Lincoln Hospital, where she was the head of the pediatrics department.

Katherine Walker Will Stand on Staten Island

Walker spent nearly three decades as the keeper of the Robbins Reef Lighthouse, which lighted the way for ships that were passing through the busy shipping channel between Staten Island and Bayonne, N.J. She took the job after her husband died, and she raised her two children at the lighthouse during the early 1900s.
As part of her job keeping the lighthouse, Walker signaled for assistance when shipwrecks occurred. Historians credit her with helping to save the lives of at least 50 people.
Walker’s statue will be installed at the Staten Island Ferry landing. Every school day, she would take her children to class on the island in a rowboat.
 

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