Work crews are preparing to remove the 60-foot-tall Confederate War Memorial at Pioneer Park Cemetery in downtown Dallas.
The monument, designed by Frank Teich and installed in Old City Park in 1897, was moved to Pioneer Cemetery in 1961. It was donated to the city by the Daughters of the Confederacy and has status as a Dallas landmark.
On Feb. 13, 2019 the City Council approved funding for the memorial's removal up to $480,000 -- the estimated cost is $396,000. The removal, however, was blocked by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
The city of Dallas obtained final permission to remove the memorial last Friday after a city attorney told the court they feared the structure could hurt someone if toppled by protesters, according to a report by the Dallas Morning News.
The city said the removal will be done, "in a manner consistent with care for works in our public art collection and the surrounding historic cemetery."
That's the same care given to the statue Robert E. Lee and the Confederate Soldier that was removed from Lee Park, now Turtle Creek Park, in 2017 and put into storage before being sold at auction. The statue, which was designed by Alexander P. Proctor, had been in place since 1936 and was donated to the city by the Southern Memorial Association.
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Removal of the Confederate War Memorial requires several steps, including the setup and delivery of equipment and the building of scaffolding. The removal is expected to take about two months to complete.
The monument is described as follows: the central obelisk is 60 feet tall with a Confederate soldier at the top; four Confederate figures (generals Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and Albert Sidney Johnston, along with Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate States) at each corner. All of the figures are 19 feet tall with the pedestals; and sculptures are marble with granite bases.
Once disassembled, the sculpture will be stored at Hensley Field, part of the Grand Prairie Armed Forces Reserve Complex and the site of the former Dallas Naval Air Station.
The cemetery is immediately north of the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center and adjacent to Pioneer Plaza, west of City Hall.
