Walk up to the George Washington monument in Chicago's Washington Park these days and you might not see George Washington at all. Depending on where you stand, the bronze figure on horseback is either partly hidden or completely swallowed up by roughly 40 flagpoles, flags and banners now ringing the statue, each one honoring a different person who happens to share his last name.
The installation, called “Other Washingtons,” was unveiled on August 6 during a ceremony attended by more than 50 people, according to South Side Weekly. Created by artist Amanda Williams, the work sits at 51st Street and Martin Luther King Drive, as WTTW reported, placing it directly around the existing monument rather than replacing it. As Bloomberg described in a feature on the project, the original statue stands 30 feet tall and has presided over that South Side corner since 1904, and the new flags and banners deliberately crowd that same ground, elevating what Bloomberg called the “other Washingtons.”
Who Gets Honored Alongside George
The names on the flags span musicians, scientists, educators and civic leaders, including Booker T. Washington, George Washington Carver, Dinah Washington, Grover Washington Jr. and the late Chicago mayor Harold Washington, according to the Chicago Tribune. Harold Washington was Chicago's first Black mayor, per Bloomberg's reporting, and his inclusion anchors the installation's local relevance alongside more nationally known figures like Denzel Washington.
Also represented is Francine Washington, a longtime leader among Chicago public housing residents who was appointed to the Chicago Housing Authority's Board of Commissioners in June 2014 and serves as president of both the Central Advisory Council and the Washington Park Local Advisory Committee, according to the Chicago Housing Authority. Architect Roberta Washington is included as well. Candice Washington, meanwhile, is serving as the project's educator-in-residence and is expected to build a curriculum for young people, the Tribune reported.
A Monument Project Years in the Making
“Other Washingtons” is one of eight major public art projects commissioned through the city's Chicago Monuments Project, which launched in 2020 to reconsider which histories Chicago represents in its public spaces, per the same South Side Weekly account. The broader initiative has received $6.8 million in funding from the Mellon Foundation, according to CNN, and the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, the Chicago Park District and Monument Lab collaborated on commissioning the new works, the Tribune noted.
Other planned commissions in the same program include a monument honoring Native voices, a sculpture of gospel singer and civil rights activist Mahalia Jackson, and a site recognizing survivors tortured by the Chicago Police Department from the 1970s through the 1990s, CNN reported. The flags and banners at Washington Park are designed to rotate annually for three years, cycling in new names and stories, the same outlet noted.
Not Erasure, But Addition
Williams has framed the project as expansion rather than removal. “This gives an opportunity to not just erase him or to either minimize or overemphasize those things, but also to just expand what it might mean to honor and exalt someone named Washington,” she told WTTW. According to the Tribune, Williams has also pointed out that the majority of people carrying the surname Washington in the United States identify as African American — a detail she has used to reframe who the name itself belongs to.
The moment fits into a wider national reckoning over public monuments; more than 160 Confederate works were removed from public spaces in 2020, per CNN's reporting. The existing statue at the center of the Chicago installation was installed in 1904 by the Daughters of the American Revolution, according to South Side Weekly, and CNN has described it as a replica of a monument gifted to France. The Chicago Park District also dates the sculpture's erection to 1904, placing it at what was then the entrance to Washington Park at Grand Boulevard, now Martin Luther King Jr. Drive — though the Tribune's own account of the site references a 1902 statue, a discrepancy the available record does not resolve.
The Chicago Park District describes the original bronze as depicting President George Washington during his service as General and Commander in Chief of the Continental Army in the Revolutionary War period. That historical framing remains visible to park visitors who approach from the right angle — even as the dozens of new flags now surrounding it ask them to look past him, too.
