NEW ORLEANS – The spot at the entrance to City Park where a statue of Confederate Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard once stood will now be the home to new greenery.
Park officials on Tuesday said recent work at the traffic circle, where the statue was from 1915 until it was removed last year, is to build a new planter that will soon be landscaped.
"We’re landscaping the circle. We’re not reinstalling anything there. We’re beautifying the front entrance of the park," said Rob DeViney, the park's chief operating officer. "It’s just to hold the vegetation and the soil base for the plantings that we’re going to do. We’re not erecting any structures. It will be completely a landscape project."
That seems to put to rest debate about what will become of the area after the Beauregard statue was plucked from its pedestal amid outcry from some and cheers from other.
The work to build a new planter began weeks after crews removed the pedestal for the Beauregard statue.
Former Mayor Mitch Landrieu, who pushed to have four Confederate monuments removed, had said plans were in the works for what would happen to Lee Circle and the spot on Canal Street where a statue of Confederate President Jefferson Davis once stood, but no work has been done at either location.
A City Hall spokesman on Tuesday said there were no updates as to what would go at either site.
The city has said the spot where the Liberty Place monument was will remain empty and that monument will not be displayed elsewhere.
Plans for the statues of Robert E. Lee, Beauregard and Davis have not been finalized.
