NEW YORK (1010 WINS) – New York state will build a monument to essential workers in lower Manhattan this summer, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Wednesday.
Cuomo said the “Circle of Heroes Monument to Essential Workers” will be in Battery Park City, with construction slated to be completed on Labor Day, which falls on Sept. 6. Ground was broken in the park this week.
The monument will be a circular path bordered by 19 maple trees, representing the groups of essential workers, including hospital staff, emergency responders, store employees and transit workers.
“It is a monument of 19 maple trees in a circle and a path in a circle, recognizing the individual responsibility and contribution of each group, but a circle representing that they were all connected, because it only worked if all the pieces worked,” Cuomo said.
At the center of the circle will be an “eternal flame that honors those that we lost during COVID,” the governor said.
“The eternal flame says, ‘Your spirit is alive in us and in our soul, and we will never forget, and we are eternally grateful for what you did,’” Cuomo said.
The site and design of the monument was chosen by a commission of labor leaders representing all of the essential workers.
The monument will be located along the Hudson River in the northwest corner of Battery Park City with views of the Statue of Liberty and New York Harbor. The area will be renamed Essential Workers’ Park.
On the monument will be a quote by Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and columnist Jim Dwyer, who died last October.
The quote reads: “In times to come, when we are all gone, people not yet born will walk in the sunshine of their own days because of what women and men did at this hour to feed the sick, to heal and to comfort.”
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