Mayor's office reverses plan to remove City Hall George Washington statue

    CHICAGO, Illinois (WBBM) -- Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson's office recently said it was going to remove a statue of George Washington on the fifth floor of City Hall near the Mayor's Office—only to reverse course this week.

The statue of the nation's first president has stood for 40 years. It was dedicated in 1984 when Harold Washington was mayor.

Yet recently, there were rumbles that the current administration wanted the George Washington statue removed. The idea left some Chicagoans reflecting on how the city removed statues of Christopher Columbus from city parks.

The statue of a standing George Washington is set off by velvet ropes inside City Hall. Yet because the first president owned slaves, some find it offensive.

There were talks that Mayor Johnson wanted the statue of President Washington removed from City Hall. The mayor insisted such a move is not top of mind, but something to look into.

"It's not lost that we do have to have some real recognition to how certain symbols and presentations are not being completely told, but my big mission to make sure we have safe communities," Mayor Johnson said Wednesday.

Ron Onesti, president of the Joint Civic Committee of Italian Americans, knows firsthand about statues coming down.

"When the mayor starts talking about moving monuments, taking down statues, what is he accomplishing?" Onesti said. "The resources that the city is spending."

The Joint Civic Committee of Italian Americans has its own legal team looking to erect Christopher Columbus back in city parks. A Columbus statue in Grant Park, another in Arrigo Park on the Near West Side, and a third in the South Chicago neighborhood, were all taken down in the summer of 2020.

"Those two statues—the one at Grant and the one at Arrigo Park—was paid for, maintained by our Italian American community," Onesti said.

It pains Onesti to find the Columbus statue that had been in Grant Park sitting exposed in a Chicago Park District garage—still covered in spray paint.

Then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot ordered the removal of the statues—the one in Grant Park was removed in the middle of the night in July 2020. This followed civil unrest in which protesters tried to tear down the statue themselves.

Today, all that remains is a bare pedestal, covered in a tarp and surrounded by chain-link fencing.

"It's been four years. We haven't backed down," Onesti said. "Our lawsuits are going forward. We are communicating. But we didn't go away."

After the removal of the Columbus statues, Mayor Lightfoot created the Chicago Monuments Project to review hundreds of public monuments in Chicago as part of a "a racial healing and historical reckoning project."

In 2021, the panel flagged 41 public monuments as "problematic," and in 2022, it recommended dozens of sculptures and plaques in Chicago be modified or taken down altogether, most prominently, the three Columbus statues.

Two statues of George Washington were flagged for the original problematic monument list, but not recommended for being taken down. One is in Washington Park showing him on horseback as commander in chief of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, the other in Heald Square on Wacker Drive showing Washington flanked by principal American Revolution financiers Robert Morris and Haym Salomon. The latter was the work of celebrity sculptor Lorado Taft.

Onesti said whether it's George Washington or Christopher Columbus, the statues represent history and should not be erased.

"Can you imagine if you remove all that stuff—all that history?" Onesti said. "Then where's the communication? Where's the conversation? Where are the lessons to be learned?"

Onesti said he expects to be able to speak about a resolution—a legal solution—within the next 30 days regarding the Columbus statue. But he insisted that the statue is "not going away."