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Politics & Government

City Invests in Study to Relocate Abe

Parks Department considers returning Prospect Park Lincoln Statue to Grand Army

After a 114-year stint in Prospect Park, Honest Abe may finally return home.

Last month, the Parks Department allocated $64,000 to a study that will investigate moving the Prospect Park Abraham Lincoln statue back to its original location in Grand Army Plaza.

The Lincoln statue was dedicated in 1869, just four years after his assassination. Originally mounted in Grand Army Plaza, old Abe was transferred to the lower terrace of Prospect Park's Concert Grove in 1896, after being dwarfed by the installation of the comparatively massive Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Arch four years earlier.

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Now, as part of its $70 million Wollman rink renovation, Prospect Park Alliance is funding a study to see whether it can send the statue back from where it came. When the Wollman ice-skating rink was built nearby in 1960, its surrounding chain-link fence once again dethroned the Lincoln statue, according to Prospect Park press director Eugene Patron.

"Abe has been looking at a chain-link fence for the last 50 years," Patron said. "It would be ideal to return him to his original location."

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Still, Patron expects Abe's big homecoming won't be happening anytime in the near future.

"There's no immediate plans to move the statue," he said.

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