SPRINGFIELD — Over a month after residents gathered to call for the return of a historic bench to Stearns Square Park, the City Council is now discussing ways through which it can support that plea.
During its regular meeting on Nov. 18, the council referred a resolution presented by City Councilor Zaida Govan that supports a plan and timetable for the return of the Stearns Square bench to the Maintenance and Development Committee for further deliberation.
The iconic pink granite bench, which has sat in the Stearns Square Park site for 137 years, was removed in late summer after this year’s annual Jazz and Roots Festival took place in the park because of a “public safety concern” according to Thomas Ashe, the city’s director of Parks, Buildings, and Recreation Management.
“The bench previously located in Stearns Square Park was removed due to concern for public safety,” he said in a statement. “The bench had cracks and was sinking into the ground at an angle. Currently, the bench is being safely stored by our department and we are assessing pricing for repair.”
The day before Ashe released that statement, residents, particularly those with the Springfield Preservation Trust and the Metro Center Neighborhood Council, conducted a press conference to argue that the bench should not have been removed, and that there has been a lack of transparency with the community around its removal.
“This is a public park. The people determine how our parks and our public places are utilized,” said Erica Swallow, president of the Springfield Preservation Trust, during that press conference in early October.
Swallow, who was in attendance at the Nov. 18 meeting, inferred that the bench was damaged during its removal based on eyewitness reports that the bench was taken apart by a jackhammer.
“I would say based on the tooling marks, that it was damaged during the removal,” Swallow said.
Background
In 1881, U.S. Rep. Chester William Chapin commissioned sculptor Augustus Saint Gaudens and architect Stanford White to create a sculpture of his ancestor, Deacon Samuel Chapin, along with the “turtle fountain” and the bench in Stearns Square. The park was unveiled on Thanksgiving Day in 1887. While “The Puritan,” as the statue is known, was moved to Merrick Park in 1899, the fountain and bench remained.
The bench, measuring 5 feet wide by 25 feet long, was repointed and cleaned in 2019 as part of a $1.9 million renovation of the park.
Now that the bench has been removed, the area in the park where it sat is now bricked over until the bench is repaired.
City Council meeting
The majority of the council appeared in support of returning the bench to its rightful spot, though many claimed that there could have been better communication between city officials and councilors about plans for the bench’s future.
City Councilor Maria Perez, who represents Ward 1, where Stearns Square Park resides, said she talked to City Councilor Malo Brown, who chairs the Maintenance and Development Committee, about using the committee as a forum for talking with Ashe and creating a plan for how the bench can be returned.
Perez requested that the council send the resolution Govan presented to the Maintenance and Development Committee, mainly because she said she was surprised that the resolution did not come with a plan already.
“For my colleagues in government, let’s not undermine each other’s communication, collaboration and consistency are the keys for the better community,” Perez said, during the meeting.
After reading the resolution into the record, Govan described the bench as an “historic piece of art” for the city Springfield. She suggested during the meeting that the Maintenance and Development Committee should continue to hold discussions about plans to restore the bench and urged the council to vote for the resolution during the Nov. 18 meeting.
“We are very proud of our city, the city of homes, all the nice historic homes we have in our city, and this is a part of it,” Govan said. “So, I would urge our body to move forward and accept this resolution and urge these departments to at least come up with a timetable [for return of the bench].”
City Councilor Melvin Edwards said he is in favor of seeing the city’s historic properties maintained, but he expressed concern that conversations around the bench were becoming too “politicized,” and people were becoming more concerned about the “perception of how things were communicated,” rather than restoring the bench.
He added that Ashe will be at the Maintenance and Development meeting when this issue is discussed to answer all questions that are asked.
“Tom Ashe is our neighbor, a former colleague, and the department head,” Edwards said. “He knows what he needs to do. He knows the will and desire of the council, of the trust, the Historic Commission and the preservationists in the city.”
