Market Street Park, the small urban square you have reached, was known as Lee Park until 2017 and as Emancipation Park from June 2017 to July 2018. This small urban square was purchased in 1917 by Paul Goodloe McIntire to be the setting for a bronze equestrian statue of Robert E. Lee and his horse Traveller — a memorial McIntire had commissioned and later donated, along with the park, to the city of Charlottesville. The statue was cast in 1924 and placed here on Saturday, May 3, 1924.
Fast forward to the spring of 2017: in February the City Council voted to remove the statue, and in March a lawsuit opposing that removal was filed, leaving the statue in place pending the outcome. On June 5, 2017, the City Council, led by Mayor Michael Signer, voted unanimously to change the park’s name to Emancipation Park. Today you stand where those decisions and that history meet the pavement, where donation, commemoration, and civic debate all unfolded.
Notice the streets that frame this place: Jefferson Street to the north, Market Street to the south, First Street N.E. to the west, and Second Street N.E. to the east.