The 2018 She Built NYC announcement of a Shirley Chisholm statue (photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)

At the height of the pandemic last year, as the city was forced to shut down, all design and construction projects were frozen including an initiative to build monuments of famous women from New York’s history. The first of those monuments, honoring Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman to become a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, was intended to be built by the end of 2020. But, while the design process has resumed, there seems

A rendering of the planned Shirley Chisholm monument (photo: women.nyc)

The building of the first monument in a city initiative to honor famous women from New York City’s history and correct a long-standing gender imbalance in monuments across the city has been delayed, Gotham Gazette has learned. City officials are pointing to the shutdown stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic as the reason that the monument of Brooklyn's Shirley Chisholm, who became the first black woman elected to the House of Representatives in 1968, will not be completed by the end of this year