Catherine Of Braganza:
The Fall Of A Queen

By Aaron Rutkoff and Nick Abadjian

Once upon a time there was a statue of a Queen that was supposed to be the tallest in all of Queens. But this fairy tale has no happy ending, as the statue created to honor the borough’s likely royal namesake remains incomplete and exiled to a remote foundry upstate. The tale was not always so sad for this Queen of Queens.

In 1988, plans were set in motion to erect a 35-foot statue of Queen Catherine of Braganza in Hunters Point – the historic figure after whom some believe the borough was named. The monument to the daughter of the King of Portugal would have been the City’s second largest after the Statue of Liberty.

Queens was supposedly named after Queen Catherine in 1683, when the area was under the rule of King Charles the II of England — her husband. But some historians disagree: in the naming of Queens in the 1683 Charter of Liberties, there was no mention of Queen Catherine of Braganza.

Queens Historical Society researcher James Driscoll told the Tribune, “It’s logical to assume that [the counties] were named after King Charles and Queen Catherine, but it was never proven.”

Leaders of the City’s Portuguese Trade Commission published a biography of Catherine in conjunction with an exhibition celebrating her 300th anniversary at the Queens Museum of Art and then founded the Friends of Queen Catherine to promote her identity.

They organized an artistic competition for the design of the statue and chose internationally acclaimed sculptor Audrey Flack, who started work on the statue in a foundry upstate in Beacon, New York. Supporters of the Queen Catherine statue grew to an impressive list of international government figures, European royalty and local officials and business leaders, including Borough President Claire Shulman and Donald Trump.

Flack’s design of the 35-foot high statue showed the Queen with an orb in her hand, symbolizing her role in bridging the new and old worlds. A 10-year land use permit called for the statue to be erected at Hunter’s Point on a 15-foot domed platform.  The statue would have faced the United Nations across the East River.

The borough’s official historian Stanley Cogan told the Tribune, “I always felt that the location was bad.” Cogan didn’t think it was fair that the statue would gaze upon the UN “and all Hunters Point and Queens would get was her backside.”

A revisited history on the Queen spurred groups to rise up against the monarch when it was alleged that the Queen and her family had profited from the slave trade.

In 1997, Rev. Charles Norris of the Jamaica-based Bethesda Missionary Baptist Church told the Tribune, “We were not going to sit idly by and let them erect a statue to honor a person who benefited from the slave trade.” Norris joined forces with activist Betty Dopson, who organized the ad hoc Friends Against Queen Catherine.

Irish American Queensites were also upset with notion that a monument to a British monarch would eclipse the Calvary Cemetery, which was established for the Irish immigrant population — a people who were long oppressed by the British crown.  On top of that, the Battle of Kips Bay during the Revolutionary War took place near the statue’s proposed location.

The statue now rests in a foundry in upstate Beacon on the grounds of Tallix, Inc., where she is waiting to be cast in bronze. There has been a series of legal disputes between the original artist, an inexperienced assistant who was hired to complete the monument, the financial backers and Tallix — which has resulted in a lot of bad blood and hurt feelings, not to mention a likeness that has been criticized as distorted and ugly.

After a public hearing in 1998 Borough President Claire Shulman officially withdrew her support for the statue and pledged that it would not be placed on public land.It is not clear whether the statue will ever be used.