Plans to remove a statue of William Penn from Welcome Park in Old City are no longer part of the U.S. National Park Service plans to reimagine the space.
“Independence National Historical Park has withdrawn the review of a draft proposal to rehabilitate Welcome Park and closed the public comment period,” the parks service posted on its website late Monday. The statement also said the draft proposal was “released prematurely and had not been subject to a complete internal agency review.”
Gov. Josh Shapiro said he was in contact with the Biden administration throughout the day “to correct this decision,” in a post on social media. “I’m pleased Welcome Park will remain the rightful home of this William Penn statue — right here in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Penn founded.”
When it comes to historic locations operated by the U.S. National Park Service (NPS) in Philadelphia, Welcome Park is not on the top of most tourists’ lists.
While nearly 2.7 million people visited Independence National Historic Park in 2022, most of those visits focused around Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell. Although only a few blocks away, Welcome Park, at 2nd and Walnut streets, gets much less attention.
Opened in 1982, the park’s open plaza design reflects Penn’s original grid plans for the streets of Philadelphia, according to The Cultural Landscape Foundation. The park is named after the ship “Welcome,” which Penn arrived on when he first came to Philadelphia.
That lack of attention changed this week, as the NPS originally announced plans for upgrades at the park to fix “deteriorating” conditions and better live up to its namesake and be more, well, welcoming.
Among the initially proposed changes: new benches, exhibit panels, and a ceremonial gathering space — but also the removal of a statue of Pennsylvania founder William Penn and a model of the original Slate Roof House that once stood on the site and was Penn’s residence in Philadelphia from 1699-1701.
As news of the plan spread online, so too did criticism. Some call it a “stupid move,” while others went further, saying it’s a “communist” move to remove the statue.
The criticism is perhaps not surprising in light of the national debate over removing statues in recent years, including around the Christopher Columbus statue in South Philly’s Marconi Plaza.
The NPS’ originally proposed design kept the original street grid, but also aimed to use the site to tell an “expanded interpretation of the Native American history of Philadelphia” — an interpretation that the agency says “was developed in consultation with representatives of the indigenous nations of the Haudenosaunee, the Delaware Nation, Delaware Tribe of Indians, the Shawnee Tribe, and the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma.”
The version of the Penn statue in Welcome Park, though, is just a small version of Penn’s statue atop City Hall — the larger one arguably being the highest profile statue in the city. That version of Penn was so well revered, its presence limited the height of development throughout the city, so as to not interrupt the view of the statue.
The City Hall Penn statue has generated conversations for decades that have varied from historical to anatomical.
