Freedom Plaza, located just down Pennsylvania Avenue NW from the White House, has reopened with new statues and an operational fountain.
The plaza was initially closed to pedestrians in December to allow for rehabilitation work and the installation of the statue exhibition, titled “Spirit of ’76 at Freedom Plaza.”
The fountain in Freedom Plaza, first installed in the 1990s, had been out of commission since 2013, Superintendent of National Mall and Memorial Parks Kevin Griess said at a reopening ceremony Tuesday.
Among the new installations at Freedom Plaza is a statue of Caesar Rodney. Rodney, of Delaware, made an 18-hour horse ride from his state to Philadelphia to break Delaware’s deadlock and ensure that the Declaration of Independence was unanimous, the National Park Service said on its website.
The equestrian statue originally stood in Wilmington, Delaware, 98 miles northeast of the District of Columbia, but was removed during the 2020 George Floyd protests over Rodney’s ownership of enslaved people.
Another part of the exhibition includes bronze statues of 12 American Revolutionary War soldiers: Caesar Glover, Jack Sisson, James Caldwell, James Lafayette, John Peter Muhlenberg, Joseph Warren, Jude Hall, Naphtali Daggett, Peter Salem, Salem Poor, Samuel Whittemore and Simon Knowles.
There is also a 23-foot bronze statue titled “Spirit of Liberty,” a sword-bearing woman meant to represent American ideals.
The base of her statue is emblazoned with a quote from George Washington, reading “the preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the Republican model of Government, are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally staked, on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people,” per the National Park Service website.
A memorial was also put in place to honor Americans who died while being forced to serve on British prison ships. The work, called the Prison Ship Martyrs Monument, consists of bronze slabs of varying heights that form the outline of a ship’s hull when viewed from above.
Nearly 12,000 Americans died in captivity on the ships, the National Park Service said.
Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum wrote on social media Wednesday that “Freedom Plaza is a tribute to the patriots who believed that America is always worth building, worth serving and worth sacrificing for.”
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