BY BRENT KILLACKEY
Journal Times | Posted: Tuesday, September 4, 2007 12:00 am
RACINE - The Racine City Council Tuesday night ordered Mayor Gary Becker to appoint an ad hoc committee to recommend where to place two Civil War cannons that previously sat on Monument Square.
Creation of the committee came after the council voted 9-5 that the cannons should not be returned to the square. The vote backed a recommendation by the Landmarks Preservation Commission, which didn't think the cannons fit with the square's open-space redesign. The way debate unfolded, the Board of Parks, Recreation and Cultural Services' competing recommendation to return the cannons to the square was effectively ignored. The council's vote, however, appeared to have been nullified by creation of the committee.
Becker said the committee would consider Monument Square among the possible locations, and no aldermen objected. He expected the committee to be named and come together in the next couple of months; there was no rush because it was unlikely the cannons could still be placed somewhere this year, he said.
Other suggested locations include Kids Cove playground at North Beach; Mound Cemetery; a future Downtown veterans museum; Memorial Hall; by the Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln statue near Gateway Technical College; and Roosevelt Park, the location of a Civil War artillery training ground.
The cannons were removed from square two years ago as part of a renovation designed to create more open space for events. They were largely forgotten, stored on tires behind a public works building, until the city of Kenosha asked to borrow them for a Civil War museum.
The suggestion of sending the cannons south sparked an outcry, and the current effort, which at times has become controversial, to find a place for them in Racine.
"Now the cannons are causing our own version of the Civil War," said Alderman Jeff Coe, who opposed a Monument Square location and still supported loaning them to Kenosha's museum.
"There was a time the cannons belonged on Monument Square," Coe said. "That time has passed."
Alderman Jim Kaplan, whose recommendation to return the cannons to Monument Square sparked the council's debate, said that without the cannons, Monument Square had lost prestige, authority and history. Reclaiming space for the cannons would not interfere with use of the square, Kaplan said.
Representatives from local veterans' organizations spoke at the start of the meeting in favor of returning the cannons to the square. The cannons were part of the Civil War memorial, and their removal was disrespectful to the city's Civil War veterans, they said.
Devin Sutherland, executive director of the Downtown Racine Corp., spoke against their return and in favor of a new location, noting the cannons were disrespected by having garbage thrown in them and skateboarders skate on them when they were in the square.
The cannons, two 4.2-inch, 30-pound, Navy Parrott rifle artillery pieces, were installed on Monument Square sometime between the 1884 installation of the Civil War memorial and 1891, when a photograph shows them there. They are listed on the National Register of Surviving Civil War Artillery.