Harriet Tubman Park, Urban park in South End, Boston, US
Harriet Tubman Park occupies a triangular traffic island in Boston's South End, formerly Columbus Square. Its brick paving is inlaid with bronze pavers depicting scenes from the Underground Railroad. The park holds two sculptures: Fern Cunningham's Harriet Tubman Memorial and Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller's Emancipation, made for the fiftieth anniversary of Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation.
The triangular traffic island was formerly Columbus Square and was redeveloped as a park by the Boston Parks and Recreation Department with funding from the Browne Fund, the Henderson Foundation and the New England Arts Foundation. It was designed by CBA Landscape Architects and received a Boston Society of Landscape Architects Merit Award for Design. The Harriet Tubman Memorial is by sculptor Fern Cunningham; Emancipation, by Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller, was made for the fiftieth anniversary of Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation.
The park sits on a triangular traffic island once called Columbus Square, and its brick paving is inlaid with bronze pavers depicting scenes from the Underground Railroad story. Two sculptures stand here: Fern Cunningham's Harriet Tubman Memorial and Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller's Emancipation, placed on the fiftieth anniversary of Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. The park is a stop on the Boston Women's Heritage Trail.
The park occupies a triangular traffic island at the corner of Columbus Avenue and Warren Avenue in the South End, so it is reached on foot from the surrounding sidewalks. The brick paving and bronze pavers lie underfoot, and the two sculptures stand in the open without gates or staff. Visitors pass through rather than enter it.
The back of the sculpture includes a tribute from Frederick Douglass, noting how the midnight sky and silent stars witnessed Tubman's dedication to freedom. This hidden detail connects two influential voices of the abolitionist movement within a single monument.
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