The Frank Rizzo statue, once a symbol of racial strife in Philadelphia, will be returned to the committee that owns it

Philadelphia, it seems, has not yet seen the last of controversial former mayor and police commissioner Frank Rizzo.

Rizzo’s statue, formerly a fixture at the Municipal Services Building across from City Hall, has long been in storage since it was removed from public view amid civil rights protests in 2020. Now, in the conclusion to a yearslong legal battle, the city has finalized an agreement transferring ownership of the statue back to the Frank L. Rizzo Monument Committee, which commissioned and donated the monument.

As part of the agreement, which the Philadelphia Art Commission unanimously approved Wednesday, the city will also make an $80,000 payment to the group for damages caused to the statue during its removal. The statue may only be displayed on private property, and must be behind a structure that makes it “not visible from the public right of way,” the agreement states.

Exceptions, however, can be made with approval by the mayor or managing director. George Bochetto, one of the monument committee’s attorneys, said the “chapter is not closed” on the statue’s future home, and that the group is in talks with Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s administration.

Wednesday’s development is the latest in the statue’s 30-plus-year history, which began shortly after Rizzo died in 1991 in the midst of his fifth mayoral campaign. Here is how The Inquirer and Daily News covered it:

The path to the Rizzo statue began in 1992, about seven months after the former mayor’s death. It would be a privately funded monument, with the Frank L. Rizzo Monument Committee raising money for its construction.

A number of sites for the monument were floated, but the Municipal Services Building location, where it ended up, was not chosen without drama. Rizzo’s statue was installed about 100 feet from “Government of the People,” the hulking abstract sculpture by Jacques Lipchitz for which, as mayor, he refused to provide city funds.

At one point, Rizzo said Lipchitz’s work looked like “a plasterer dropped a load of plaster,” though he reportedly came to appreciate it later in life.

Zenos Frudakis, the statue’s sculptor, signed a $100,000 contract with the commission in early 1994, The Inquirer reported. Initially set to be a life-size statue, its stature grew significantly before debuting publicly, landing at about 10 feet tall.

It started with an 18-inch model, with Rizzo’s likeness based on a photograph of the former mayor at the 1972 St. Patrick’s Day parade, The Inquirer reported in 1998.

The sculptor never met Rizzo and agonized over the monument’s creation. According to reports from the time, Frudakis was concerned that Rizzo’s outstretched arm could have been misconstrued as a Nazi salute or a Mussolini wave, so he added a bend at the elbow. And, concerned the statue would be dwarfed by “Government of the People,” Frudakis increased the statue’s size.

Rizzo’s statue was installed at the Municipal Services Building days before the clock on 1998 ran out. On New Year’s Day 1999, a blue plastic tarp was pulled off the monument, revealing it to the world.

A crowd of about 150 people gathered for an unveiling ceremony that culminated with the Broomall String Band playing in the background at the Mummers Parade, The Inquirer reported. And there Rizzo stood, a 10-foot-tall, 2,000-pound version of one of the city’s most divisive figures, cast in bronze for eternity.

It was, then-Mayor Ed Rendell said, not the only tribute to Rizzo in the city. A painting of Rizzo hung in the Mayor’s Reception Room in City Hall, but that piece was unable to “catch the spirit and leadership and dominance of Mayor Rizzo.

“This wonderful piece of art does that and more,” he concluded.

While never completely without controversy, Rizzo’s monument began generating significant public discourse in 2013 after George Zimmerman was found not guilty of murdering Trayvon Martin. Following the verdict, local protests focused in part on the statue, with Inquirer coverage noting in an understatement that the former mayor and police commissioner had “a poor relationship with Philadelphia’s African American community.”

Public outcry over the statue continued to grow in 2016, when protesters draped a Ku Klux Klan hood over its head following that year’s Democratic National Convention. Protesters called it a monument to a reminder of racial strife and discrimination, and demanded it be taken down; the Philly Coalition for REAL Justice started a petition to have the statue removed.

“It should never have been built,” said local activist Asa Khalif, who put the hood on Rizzo’s monument. “And it should have never been placed here for us to be reminded of his brutality.”

Then-Mayor Jim Kenney, meanwhile, said he would consider moving the statue, but noted that dialogue wouldn’t “be started and finished over a few days and a few hundred signatures” on a petition. The following year, fervor over the monument increased, with several City Council members calling for its removal as cities around the country began rethinking their own monuments to figures with histories tied to racism.

Kenney’s administration agreed that it was “a good time to have that conversation about the statue’s future,” but did little to substantively quell public outrage.

In August 2017, the statue was defaced with a spray-painted message reading “Black Power Matters.” Activist Wali Rahman was charged in the crime, but the charges were later dropped.

Kenney began soliciting public suggestions on what to do with the statue, and in November 2017, his office announced that it would be moved as part of a planned renovation of Thomas Paine Plaza — eventually.

By 2019, Kenney said he expected the statue to remain in place until at least June 2021 as planning for the Paine Plaza revamp continued. By December 2019, the statue was again vandalized, this time with graffiti reading “fascist” on its suit jacket. And then, in May 2020, with the pandemic in full swing and tensions at full tilt over the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, the public’s fury erupted in Philadelphia.

Protesters in Philadelphia focused on the statue, attempting to burn and topple it in late May. One man attempted to destroy its head with a hammer, and others tried to yank it down with ropes. In the aftermath, the Rizzo monument’s outstretched hand and face were left covered in red paint, and its body was emblazoned with graffiti.

Only days later, it was gone — removed in predawn hours after the height of the protests, quietly socked away into storage after years of delays. The destruction and unrest Philadelphia had experienced, it seemed, had cut through the red tape the Kenney administration had long cited for the statue’s endurance. Kenney, The Inquirer reported, moved up the timeline on its removal, citing “unprecedented emergency circumstances.”

It was never to return to city property.

About a month after the statue’s removal, the monument committee filed a lawsuit against Kenney and the city, demanding that they be allowed to take possession of it. The city, the committee claimed, violated a 1998 agreement when it removed the statue, allegedly ignoring a stipulation that required the committee to be offered ownership in the event the monument was to be taken down.

Four years later, the situation seemed to be on the road to resolution. The statue, The Inquirer reported, could soon be returned to the committee. Attorney George Bochetto said that the city agreed to return the statue and pay for the damages it incurred during its removal. It would, Bochetto said, be displayed once again, though the final site wasn’t yet determined.

“We’re not looking to create bad feelings or stick it to anybody,” he said. “We’re looking to display perhaps one of the more historic figures in Philadelphia history.”