On Monday night, the National Park Service withdrew a draft proposal to rehabilitate Welcome Park, including removing a statue of William Penn in a move that had set off an uproar earlier in the day.
The press release read, “Independence National Historical Park has withdrawn the review of a draft proposal to rehabilitate Welcome Park and closed the public comment period. The preliminary draft proposal, which was released prematurely and had not been subject to a complete internal agency review, is being retracted. No changes to the William Penn statue are planned.
“The National Park Service remains committed to rehabilitating Welcome Park as the nation prepares to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in 2026. Upon completion of all the necessary internal reviews, the park looks forward to engaging in a robust public process to consider options for refurbishing the park in the coming years.
“The park is located on the site of William Penn’s home, the Slate Roof House, and is named for the ship, Welcome, which transported Penn to Philadelphia. The design and construction of Welcome Park was funded by the Independence Historical Trust and was completed in 1982. Updates on the project may be found on the park’s website at www.nps.gov/INDE.
The matter had become heated earlier Monday as Republican lawmakers and commenters on social media were giving the park service a rough time about the plan.
“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,” Bryan Cutler, R-Lancaster, said in a statement.
“This issue is also deeply personal to me,” Cutler said. “The first Cutlers came to Pennsylvania in 1685 on the ship Rebekah, not long after Penn’s arrival in 1682. They came to Pennsylvania because they were Quakers who shared Penn’s view of religious tolerance and peace.”
Cutler said he plans to introduce a resolution to honor Penn and will encourage the National Park Service to rethink their proposal, the Inquirer said.
Scott Martin, R-Lancaster County, and chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, called the move “Absolutely disgraceful” on X, formerly known as Twitter.
“As the United States and our Commonwealth are planning the coming celebration of America250, for anyone to think doing this to the founder of Pennsylvania and the City of Philadelphia, which was the epicenter of freedom and our nation’s founding, was a good idea, is completely absurd,” he wrote.
A social media post from the NPS on the proposal resulted in a deluge of negative comments, with one person writing, “How about no more of our tax money for the US Park Service?”
There are two other statues of Penn in Philadelphia. One is at Penn Treaty Park, while the other famously stands atop the dome of City Hall.
The public was originally invited to submit comments on the Park Service’s proposal through Jan. 21.
Source: Berkshire mont
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