Beethoven battles Pershing Square: Renovation uproar over statues, monuments

A group of local history enthusiasts is calling on city officials and architects to include existing statues and monuments – including a 1932 version of Beethoven and a 1924 World War I “Doughboy” – in the renovation plans of Pershing Square.

City officials and a nonprofit group tasked with revamping Pershing Square recently held a design competition and unveiled the winning concept — by Paris-based landscape architecture firm Agence Ter — that calls for a “radically flat” park, mostly distinguished by a large, grassy lawn.

But a group named the Pershing Square Restoration Society says the design fails to include important and potentially historic monuments that currently are part of the park. They say there also appears to be no indication city officials want to ensure the statues stay in the park.

Members of the restoration group point to social media statements by an aide for Councilman Jose Huizar, who suggested that the statues could be relocated out of the park if necessary.

Members of the restoration group said Thursday they have launched a petition campaign to ask city officials and Agence Ter architects to reconsider.

The petition currently has 167 supporters .

The monuments in question include Beethoven (installed in 1932), Doughboy (1924) and the Spanish American War Memorial, an official historic- cultural monument installed in 1900 and considered the city’s oldest work of public art.

Pershing Square Restoration Society co-founder Kim Cooper said the monuments “aren’t just inconvenient hunks of metal that can be moved around the city like chess pieces; they are Los Angeles history incarnate.”

“The mothers who wept beside the Doughboy, the music lovers who came many miles to stand quietly with Beethoven, the old soldiers who remembered distant friends when they passed the Spanish American War Memorial are still there in Pershing Square as long as the monuments remain,” Cooper said. “It would be a civic disgrace to do anything other than restore the monuments to their prominent places within the park.”

— Wire reports