On Saturday, the city of Albany quietly removed a statue of Revolutionary War General Philip Schuyler from outside city hall — three years after announcing the move.
In June 2020 Mayor Kathy Sheehan signed an Executive Order directing the removal of the statue from the circle in front of city hall.
Part of a famed Colonial Albany family, the general in the Continental Army who later served as a U.S. Senator from New York was a slaveowner. The statue was dedicated in 1925.
The move came as unrest spread nationwide following the killing of George Floyd.
At the time the Democrat said "scores of community members" reached out to her office requesting the statue's removal. Sheehan said it would be relocated to a place where its historical context could be better honored. Crews showed up at dawn Saturday for the removal, which Sheehan says will alter the entrance to city hall, but it’s not clear where the statue is heading in the long term.
“We're in the process of redesigning the steps to city hall so that it can be accessible to people who are in wheelchairs or have walkers," said Sheehan. "Right now you have to come in, you have to ring a bell, you have to be led into the basement and then get on the elevators. Sometimes our elevators break down. It's an old building. And so it's time. And I didn't realize at the time that we were discussing that, but the reality is, in order to do that, we're going to have to extend the stairs out probably taking up the entire sidewalk, which means we'll need more space in the roadway. So at this point, the plan is that this circle will be removed completely as we reimagine what the front of city hall is going to look like. “
The Democrat says the statue separated from its concrete base "relatively easily." It was loaded onto a flatbed trailer and taken away to storage. After several hours Department of General Services employees excavated a metal box from beneath the base that held a time capsule containing letters and 1920s memorabilia.
“Obviously they anticipated that this statue wouldn't stay here forever, because they buried a time capsule in it," Sheehan said. "And I know that our city historian, the Albany Institute of History and Art, the Stephen and Harriet Myers House, I've been in contact with leaders from all of those institutions and we're going to work with them and ensure that the contents of the time capsule are preserved for perpetuity.”
Not everyone is cheering the statue’s removal. Albany County legislator Jeff Perlee, a Republican from Altamont, said it’s a shortsighted erasure of the city’s history. He pointed out that Schuyler was a Revolutionary War hero, a U.S. Senator, and father-in-law to Alexander Hamilton.
