Downtown planners — led by former Borough President Howard Golden — want to turn the stately, but neglected war memorial in Cadman Plaza Park into a state-of-the-art museum and veterans center as well as a monument to heroes from the Revolutionary War to the current conflicts abroad.
Golden, who chairs the newly formed “Brooklyn War Memorial Conservancy,” called on supporters to help refurbish and reinvigorate the symbolic structure.
“In recent years, the building has fallen on hard times even as the role of fighting men and women has taken on renewed significance in today’s world,” Golden said.
Currently, the space is an underused community facility for civic, cultural and veterans’ organizations. The campaign would restore the memorial and rededicate it to all of the borough’s veterans, starting from the Battle of Brooklyn, Golden added.
Organizers are still trying to determine how much the full renovations will cost and how long it might take, said Conservancy spokesman Mike Armstrong. The city has done some cosmetic work in the last few years.
In the interim, the city hopes to hold activities on Memorial Day, the Parks Department’s borough commissioner Julius Spiegel said at a breakfast last Thursday to publicly kick off the effort.
The monument was constructed in 1945 and dedicated in 1951 to honor Brooklyn’s World War II fallen. Names of the dead are etched onto it.
For information, contact the Independence Community Foundation at www.icfny.org.
