PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — The National Park Service withdrew its proposal to redesign a Philadelphia park just three days after the debate was made open to the public.
On Friday, the park service proposed a rehabilitation of Welcome Park in Old City, located on the site of William Penn’s home, the Slate Roof House. It’s named after the Welcome ship that brought him to Pennsylvania.
According to NPS, Independence Historical Trust funded both the design and construction of the park, which was completed in 1982.
Rehabilitation of this historical site would have included an expanded interpretation of Philadelphia’s Native American history and the removal of the Penn statue and the Slate Roof House.
NPS says the plan was developed in consultation with representatives of the indigenous nations of Haudenosaunee, Delaware Nation, the Delaware Tribe of Indians, the Shawnee Tribe, and the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma.
They say they had planned to keep certain aspects of the original design, like the street grid, rivers, and the east wall, and that the revision would have provided “a more welcoming, accurate, and inclusive experience for visitors.”
Before NPS withdrew its proposal Monday night, Pennsylvania House Republican Leader Bryan Cutler sent out a statement regarding the potential change.
“The decision by President Biden and his administration to try and cancel William Penn out of whole cloth is another sad example of the left in this country scraping the bottom of the barrel of wokeism to advance an extreme ideology and a nonsensical view of history,” he said.
“... To remove Penn’s statue to create a more inclusive environment takes absurd and revisionist view of our state’s history and further seems to serve no purpose other than to check a box for an increasingly dangerous radicalism infiltrating today’s left-wing political agenda.”
In response to the original rehabilitation plan, Cutler said he was sponsoring a resolution to honor Penn — specifically, the agreement he made with the Lenape tribe in 1682 to live peacefully among one another, known as the Treaty of Shackamaxon or the “Great Treaty.”
The comment period, which opened to the public on Monday and was expected to run through midnight on Jan. 21, is closed.
NPS says the proposal was prematurely released and “had not been subject to a complete internal agency review.”
They say no changes will be made to the statue.
Gov. Josh Shapiro said in a post on X, formerly Twitter, that his team had been in contact with the Biden Administration throughout the day to correct the decision.
"I’m pleased Welcome Park will remain the rightful home of this William Penn statue — right here in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Penn founded," he said.