William Penn Statue and the Slate Roof House to be Removed from Welcome Park-NPS Withdraws Plan

Question

The United States National Park Service has announced plans to remove the statue of William Penn and the Slate Roof House from Welcome Park, the site of Penn's home. This is not The Onion.

The public comment period will open tomorrow, January 8 for a mere two weeks and a link to comment will then appear at this NPS page. A press release regarding this atrocious plan is found here.

Edit: the immediate public reaction to the proposal has forced the NPS to withdraw the proposal entirely. "Independence National Historical Park has withdrawn the review of a draft proposal to rehabilitate Welcome Park and closed the public comment period. The preliminary draft proposal, which was released prematurely and had not been subject to a complete internal agency review, is being retracted. No changes to the William Penn statue are planned."  This was quietly posted here (with no date stamp) with no mention anywhere else on the NPS site including the page for projects open to public comment.

Comments

T Stanton, thanks very much for bringing this to our attention. It sounds like this particular case may turn out to be a tempest in a teapot, but so often these things things aren't—like the current ridiculous proposal of the UK government to destroy original wills!

Answer 1

I'm almost always in favor of historic preservation, but I think a couple of points are worth mentioning here:

• The Slate Roof House was torn down in 1867. What's there now is just a model, not even a full-sized replica.
• The statue of Penn is a copy of the one that's on top of Philadelphia City Hall and only dates to 1982 when they built the park.
• When they built the park it had 4 (four) trees, which were taken out 5 or 10 years ago. They may have recently replanted them. But all in all for a "park" it lacks things like benches and greenery.

I haven't seen the actual plan, but it doesn't sound like they're taking out anything in need of preservation.

Comments

I was aware the Slate Roof House was a replica but not that the statue is a copy of the one on City Hall. The Slate Roof House is where Penn wrote the Charter of Privileges upon which the US Constitution is largely modeled. I'm not sure that the statue being a copy makes it of no or lesser value or importance given the location. This all has the same odor as the box built around Christopher Columbus' statute at Columbus Circle in New York, the removal of Teddy Roosevelt's statue at the Museum of Natural History, and on goes the list of "cleansing." I've not been to Welcome Park since about 2008 so I don't know what it has looked like recently. 

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The current park is neglected and has no charm and aside from place names there is almost no commemoration of the Lenape in Philadelphia.  This article gives context to why this is a good thing for Philly history: https://hiddencityphila.org/2019/08/philadelphias-forgotten-forebears-how-pennsylvania-erased-the-lenape-from-local-history/

While I'm here, Iet me recommend Lenape Country: Delaware Valley Society Before William Penn by Jean Soderlund; the politics of Lenape interactions with the Swedes, Dutch, and other tribes are riveting.

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An interesting work by noted Quaker (and cousin) Samuel Janney, The Last of the Lenape and other poems, published by Henry Perkins, Philadelphia, 1839. Among Janney's other works "History of the...Friends...to the Year 1828" (Zell, Philadelphia, 1867, 4 vols) and "The Life of William Penn" (Perkins, Philadelphia, 1852).

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Philadelphian with deep Quaker roots weighing in here...

Everything Regan and H. Husted pointed out is true. And a lot of the knee jerk reactionary drama comes from (mostly right leaning) media pairing photographs of the Penn statue sitting atop City Hall with dubious headlines which imply that NPS intended to remove that landmark statue. Most folks bent out of shape over this never even knew the other statue existed prior to yesterday's news. 

Furthermore, Penn was a Quaker and humbleness is one of the faith's core values. Penn didn't even want the colony named after him. So a statue of his likeness atop City Hall and a duplicate in a park aren't really the best ways to commemorate his role in the shaping of Philadelphia's history. 

The current "park" is not very welcoming and some of the proposed changes would be an improvement - adding circular benches to form a gathering space, plant buffers on three sides, expanding Lenape representation and history and, yes, removing the Penn statue.

Where I think the NPS went too far is that it should not have proposed to remove the commemorative model of the Slate Roof House.  It's tiny, modest and relevant to the history of the location. I can see where that, coupled with the vagueness on what will be included on the future south wall exhibit panels, plus people's general lack of knowledge about the space in its current form, and media click bait have led to outcries against the entire proposal.  

Pity, because it's a chance to improve Welcome Park and make it truly a more welcoming, green and utilized space.

Do a 360 of its current state and you can see how unwelcoming it is. Interesting, sure. But not any kind of park befitting a "greene country towne" (seriously, the stormwater runoff alone could be cause for a refresh to include gardens/green space) nor a welcoming gathering space.  

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"And a lot of the knee jerk reactionary drama comes from (mostly right leaning) media pairing photographs of the Penn statue sitting atop City Hall with dubious headlines which imply that NPS intended to remove that landmark statue." I did not see that anywhere, examples?

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"I did not see that anywhere, examples?"

I didn't bookmark them and a cursory Google search brings up only today's news of the withdrawn plan.

But on X (Twitter) yesterday it was right wing posts that flooded my feed, linking to news articles paired with City Hall Billy Penn.

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Answer 2

Just wanted to share.... Media Right News has published an online article about the reversal, and was shared in a Fan Group I'm on in Facebook. Online Article has a date of Jan 8, 2024.