Published December 23, 2005. Reprinted with permission from the Deseret Morning News.

Joseph Smith statue to be unveiled in Manhattan
Carrie A. Moore, Deseret Morning News

Just hours before LDS Church founder Joseph Smith is celebrated worldwide by an audience of millions via satellite tonight, a likeness of him will be unveiled in lower Manhattan, where Latter-day Saints will sing praise to the man who was born 200 years ago today, Dec. 23, 1805.

After months of politicking and persuasion, an 8-foot-tall statue of Joseph Smith was placed in Old Slip Park Sunday morning and will be formally unveiled during dedication ceremonies at 4 p.m. Eastern time, according to President Brent Belnap of the New York New York Stake.

"I'm told he's larger than life size and stands on a low base so he's very approachable," Belnap said. "Standing next to him, he's definitely bigger than you are," doubtless as a way of memorializing the work Joseph Smith did to establish The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — now among the fastest-growing faiths in America.

The bronze statue, entitled "The Frontier Prophet," was sculpted by local LDS artist Dee Jay Bawden, and it stands near the place on Pearl Street where Joseph Smith stayed during his visit to New York City in 1832. Old Slip Park was once a departure point for large sailing ships.

A permanent plaque memorializes the area as the place many early church members set sail on the ship Brooklyn, bound for San Francisco, in February 1846, at the same time hundreds of their counterparts were leaving Nauvoo, Ill., on their historic migration west. Belnap wanted to do something more to memorialize LDS history in the city, and Robert Clark, a friend who is a Salt Lake City attorney active with the Mormon Historic Sites Foundation, told him the foundation was looking for new projects. At that point, local church member and Columbia University faculty member Claudia Bushman got involved, working with local officials to help forward the proposed placement of the statue. Bushman's husband, Richard Bushman, recently published a highly acclaimed biography, "Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling."

The proposal was presented before a community board in the lower Manhattan area. "They voted overwhelmingly in the negative," Belnap said, many of them expressing sentiments that Joseph Smith "was a fraud and this is a false religion."

A reporter for a local community newspaper "was actually offended that members of the board could be so intolerant in 2005 regarding religion" and wrote about the board's opposition to the project, Belnap said. The story "was fairly supportive of the statue project." Bushman and others pressed forward, approaching the parks department and using other political connections to obtain the necessary approvals.

Another Manhattan church member, Mark Holden, made some connections with Bawden and "all the factors came together," Belnap said. "I don't know who put up the money for the statue. I have a good idea but I literally don't know. The cost is reputed to be about $300,000. There are some very generous individuals, mostly in Utah, who were interested in promoting it, and knowing we were willing participants it all came together."

Kim Wilson with the Mormon Historic Sites Foundation said the New York group "needed an entity and the financial support. It seemed like a really great idea." The foundation didn't do any specific fund raising for the project, he said, but used resources from its general fund.

"It's a wonderful tribute to the prophet on the 200th anniversary of his birth — to be honored by the largest city in the United States and in the state where the church was born." The LDS Church is growing rapidly in Manhattan, evidenced not only by the dedication of a temple there in 2004, but by the well-publicized opening of a large chapel in Harlem earlier this year.

The statue of Joseph Smith is in close proximity to the Brooklyn Bridge and South Street Seaport and is scheduled to remain in place at least until June 2006.

E-mail: carrie@desnews.com