FLOATING, LIKE A VAPOR
In the end, the contentious old statue at Schenley Plaza didn’t put up any fight.
Fasteners that once tied the bronze piece to a granite base had rotted long ago. When city workers showed up about dawn Thursday, it took them less than an hour to hoist, lower and then secure the Stephen Foster sculpture in a flatbed truck bound for storage.
“The only thing that was unexpected [was] that it went smoother than I was hoping,” said Tom Samstag, acting construction supervisor in the city Department of Public Works.
Workers estimated the cityowned statue weighs 800 pounds and its base more than 6 tons, Mr. Samstag said. Drivers hauled them both from Oakland to a city facility in Highland Park, shielded from public view while Mayor Bill Peduto’s administration tries to find the century-old artwork a permanent spot.
The move followed an October decision by the Pittsburgh Art Commission, which found that the statue should be removed within six months and hosted in a private, “properly contextualized” location. Many residents have held that the sculpture — showing a shoeless African-American banjo player seated at the famed composer’s feet — is condescending or outright racist. Speakers at commission meetings last year largely agreed.
“Obviously, it was popular and meaningful to the people of Pittsburgh back when it was placed” in 1900, Peduto spokesman Timothy McNulty said. Clearly, he said, time shifted the public’s view.