Why Should Delaware Care?
In recent years, Wilmington has seen its share of debates over monuments in public spaces. Last month, a statue of President James A. Garfield, which stood in the city’s north side for over a century, was shipped to Ohio at a cost of nearly $21,600 in public dollars. Now, some elected officials and community leaders are arguing the move took place with little public notice.
A backlash has erupted over last month’s removal of a statue of President James A. Garfield from a small plaza in Wilmington, with several state lawmakers and transparency advocates demanding it be returned from its new location in small-town Ohio.
City Councilman Nathan Field has also called for a formal investigation into the move. Field met with Mayor John Carney’s office on Friday to discuss the statue and said he is working on a plan to return the monument to a new location in the city.
In response to the calls to bring back the statue, City Councilwoman Shané Darby — who led its relocation push as part of a revitalization effort for the Concord Avenue area it had occupied — said, “No, it’s gone. Not coming back.”
Last month, a contracting crew took down the statue from its perch along Concord Avenue and 23rd Street, where it had stood for 110 years. Mayor John Carney had authorized the removal.
City officials then shipped the monument on to Hiram, Ohio, where Garfield attended college and later served as principal for the school.
Wilmington taxpayers covered the $21,595 cost to remove, crate and ship the statue, according to a city invoice.
The move marked the end of the statue’s 130-year residence in Wilmington. It also came in the wake of two separate controversies over the removal of statues in the city in recent years. Those included the Christopher Columbus statue, whose proposed reinstallation drew support and backlash from city residents back in February, and the Ceaser Rodney statue, which some lawmakers called for the return of after it was removed during the 2020 George Floyd protests.
Is Garfield significant to Wilmington?
On Memorial Day in 1895, a group of Wilmington civic leaders and Union veterans — called the Garfield Monument Association — first dedicated the statue at a location along Delaware Avenue, near downtown Wilmington.
By 1918, the city moved it north to Concord Avenue at a location that became known as the Garfield Triangle. In recent years, the statue sat mostly unnoticed in the small neighborhood plaza.
In February, Darby led the push to relocate the statue as part of her larger plan to revitalize the area, according to a blog post she wrote on the matter.
“This was never simply about removing a statue. It was about addressing neighborhood concerns, investing in a neglected public space, and ensuring that residents have a voice in shaping their own community.”
In the post, Darby asserted that Garfield had no “significant documented personal connection to Wilmington or Delaware,” while Hiram, Ohio, has a direct historical tie to the former president.
Darby said she had been in conversation with community members and local artists for the past two years about revitalizing the area, which has been ridden with loitering, drug solicitation, and poor conditions overall, she said. She noted that residents were surveyed about the statue and did not express a strong connection to the monument.
Darby said the goal is to create an art space and to rename the triangle.
Carney’s deputy chief of staff, Daniel Walker, told Spotlight Delaware that conversations with Darby about relocating the statue began in February.
The News Journal first revealed the monument’s relocation in a story last month.
In response, Field sent a letter to Carney’s office last month calling for an investigation into the matter and demanding answers. Among his questions was who authorized the statue’s relocation and the use of public money to do it.
“Monuments are not stop signs or park benches. They are collective property owned by the people of Wilmington and a key part of the city’s cultural history,” Field said in a statement to Spotlight Delaware.
Following Field’s letter, a group of state lawmakers and other Delaware residents also formally called for answers from the mayor about what they said was a lack of input from residents and council members.
They argued the relocation was done in a “highly non-transparent process.” They also named their advocacy group, The President Garfield Citizens’ Monument Association, after the organization that existed a century earlier
John Flaherty, a prominent transparency advocate who organized the association’s letter, said he learned of the move from The News Journal report and from Field’s letter to Carney.
Signing onto the letter were five elected officials, including Field, Wilmington City Councilman James Spadola, and Republican state lawmakers, Rep. Jeff Hilovsky, Sen. Eric Buckson and Sen. Gerald Hocker.
Other signers include former-state Rep. Gerald Brady; New Castle County Recorder of Deeds Mike Kozikowski; Delaware Justice of the Peace James Hanby Sr.; and Wilmington Land Bank board member Rick Gessner.
Civic groups also signed the petition, including the Southwest Civic Association, the Delaware Society Sons of the American, and the Brandywine Village Civic Association.
In an interview, Flaherty said the statue merits continued reverence in Wilmington. He also said he hoped it was just a mistake by the mayor’s office to move it “out of the city where this monument association spent a lot of time, energy, and money collecting funds, making citizens aware of President Garfield.”
In response to the backlash, Walker said the mayor had the authority to remove and relocate the statue. But he reiterated that the process began with Darby, her conversations with residents and her “desire to reimagine what happens at that location.”
The $21,595 spent to de-install and transport the statue was split between Carney’s office and Darby, who used $7,000 of her discretionary council funds. Hiram, Ohio, covered the costs to reinstall the statue.
“Relocating the statue allows for President Garfield’s statue to move from a place of obscurity and to be celebrated and recognized in a location with deep connections to his work and efforts,” Walker said.
Asked if the statue would be returned to the city, officials from Carney’s office acknowledged they had been in contact with Field, but asserted that next steps should be directed to Darby, who they said initiated the statue’s removal.
Asked about councilmembers not being involved in the process, Darby said that nothing in the city code required other council members to be a part of the conversation.
She also emphasized that the statue would not be brought back to Wilmington.
Could the statue return?
In her blog post, Darby noted that the relocation of the Garfield statue was not done in secret.
In addition to a dialogue with the neighbors, she said her office researched potential areas in the city and contacted historical and museum institutions in Delaware to see if there was an alternative location for the monument.
Darby did not respond to Friday’s request for comment about the institutions she contacted.
In an emailed statement, officials from the Delaware Historical Society said they were unaware of the statue’s relocation.
“The Delaware Historical Society did not advise or facilitate the transfer of the statue in any way and was not aware of the move until the [News Journal] article was published.”
Other civically engaged residents also said they had no clue of its removal.
John L. Pittas, treasurer and former president of the Second District Neighborhood Planning Council, said he and two other council directors met with Darby at the statue in May 2021 to talk about its future, but said there was not an appetite to move it at the time.
He learned of the removal the morning it happened, when a colleague texted him photos of crews packing up the statue, he said.
“There was no consultation by either the city or Councilwoman Darby,” said Pittas, who is also president of the Brandywine Village Civic Association and signed the association’s letter. The planning council’s office sits across the street from the statue’s former Concord Avenue site.
Pittas also argued that the statue held significance in Wilmington, pointing to the president’s Civil War service and support for civil rights for freed slaves.
“Those folks back then in Wilmington thought that he was worthy of recognition, and that’s why the statue was put up,” he said.
Pittas said he has a proposed spot if the statue returns: the small triangle across from the Central YMCA on Delaware Avenue, near where it originally stood.
Garfield served as the 20th president of the United States. He was born in 1831 in northeast Ohio. He worked his way through the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute in Hiram, and later returned to lead the school, now Hiram College.
When the Civil War broke out, Garfield served in the Union Army. He was elected to Congress while still serving and spent 17 years in the U.S. House of Representatives for Ohio, where he opposed slavery and backed voting rights for Black Americans.
Garfield won the presidency in 1880 but served only about 200 days. He died in 1881 after he was shot by Charles Guiteau, a disappointed office seeker, at a Washington, D.C., train station.
After his death, communities nationwide, including Ohio, D.C., California, and Wilmington, raised money for memorials in his honor.
Hiram Mayor Ann Haynam confirmed that she was introduced to the idea of relocating the statue earlier this year.
“This has been a community fundraising effort to honor one of our local historical figures. Hiram is one of four sites on the Garfield Trail where he went to school, preached, became the President equivalent of what is now Hiram College, led area residents as a Civil War general, and became a congressman.”
The city plans to honor the Garfield statue at their dedication ceremony on Nov. 15.
