City May Not Tear Down Any Controversial Statues, De Blasio Says

NEW YORK CITY — A commission reviewing controversial landmarks around the city might decide not to tear any of them down after all, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Thursday. The job of 18-member Commission on City Art, Monuments and Markers is to create a "single universal approach" to a hotly contested national issue.

"People have strong feelings all around on them. What I want is something that helps us address this for the long term," de Blasio said Thursday morning on Fox5's Good Day New York. "... This commission may take down no statues. Of course, they’re going to propose something to me and then I have to go through a whole process with that.”

The panel was de Blasio's response to nationwide debate over Confederate monuments after plans to remove one in Charlottesville, Virgina sparked violence in August. The commission is supposed to review a handful of controversial statues of people like Christopher Columbus and make recommendations about what the city should do with them.

De Blasio suggested extra markers near those landmarks explaining their history in more detail could be the answer. But he declined to say whether the thinks the Columbus Circle monument — a political lightning rod for the mayor — should come down.

"I’m not going to pre-judge," de Blasio said. "Because it’s not just about Columbus or folks who owned slaves or Confederate officers. It’s about everything."

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Italian-Americans have figuratively and literally booed de Blasio for handing the Columbus monument to the commission. Native American activists and others want it gone because it honors a man who tortured and murdered their ancestors.

But most New Yorkers probably care more about the city's subways and schools than the statues, de Blasio said.

"I’d like us to get to something that we say this is our universal approach, let’s put this to bed and move on," he said. "Because in the end, I value why people care, but the monuments, the statues, are really not the issues that matter to everyday New Yorkers."

While he's specifically mentioned a couple other landmarks — a statue of J. Marion Sims, an early gynecologist who experimented on enslaved women, and a plaque honoring French Nazi collaborator Phillippe Petain — the mayor hasn't said what the panel will review.

The commission released an online survey Wednesday to gather feedback on the issue but hasn't scheduled any promised public meetings.

(Lead image: Mayor Bill de Blasio marches in the 2014 Columbus Day parade. Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)