August 13, 2025
Joe Lamberti/The Courier Post/Via Imagn Content Services
The bronze statue of former Philadelphia Mayor Frank Rizzo will be returned by the city to the monument committee that commissioned the sculpture and donated it to the city in 1998. The statue was removed from Center City amid civil unrest in 2020. Above, police surround the statue on May 31, 2020.
The bronze statue of former Philadelphia Mayor Frank Rizzo that was removed from outside the Municipal Services Building in 2020 will be returned to the group that originally commissioned the sculpture, the Philadelphia Art Commission decided Wednesday morning.
The 9-foot-tall monument of Rizzo, who served as the city's police commissioner and then mayor from 1972 to 1980, was removed during protests over the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. For years, the statue had a been a target of vandals who viewed it as a symbol of police brutality and discrimination under Rizzo's administrations.
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The Frank L. Rizzo Monument Committee, which commissioned the statue and donated it to the city's public art collection in 1998, filed a lawsuit against the city to gain back possession of the sculpture after its removal. At Wednesday's meeting, the Art Commission voted unanimously to approve a settlement of the lawsuit that transfers ownership of the statue back to the committee.
"The Philadelphia Art Commission recognizes the importance of public art and appreciates the dialogue about the significance of public monuments in our city," Art Commission spokesperson Bruce Bohri said after the vote.
Under the terms of the settlement, the city will have to pay $80,000 to restore the statue to its original condition after it was damaged by vandals and the way the city removed the sculpture. The statue, made by artist Zenos Frudakis, was installed outside the Municipal Serves Building in 1998. The city had been planning to remove it as early as 2017, citing acts of vandalism and plans to renovate Thomas Paine Plaza.
The monument committee will be permitted to install the statue on private property as long as it is not visible to passersby within 20 feet of a public right-of-way. If the committee hopes to place the statue in a park or on other public land in the future, the proposal would be subject to review by the Art Commission.
The monument committee has not disclosed where it might seek to display the Rizzo statue.
