Albany Herald

Nelson Tift

ALBANY, Ga. -- City officials are working with an artist to create a statue of Albany's founder; the first of new street art campaign aimed at increasing Albany's artistic and cultural significance while paying homage its historic and famous natives.

Nelson Tift settled Albany along the banks of the Flint River in 1836 where he established a cotton trading facility.

City Manager James Taylor said he's asked Downtown Manager Aaron Blair to work on developing new and interesting street art concepts that include statues of Albany's historically notable and famous sons and daughters.

"There are a lot of well-known people who are from Albany and Dougherty County that we can showcase and spotlight," Taylor said. "I feel that, to some degree, we don't celebrate the contributions of our people enough."

Taylor said the goal is to get the community behind the program and get people excited about Albany again.

"We're hoping to generate enough excitement among the citizens to get behind us," Taylor said. "We'd like to re-integrate the turtles into this but we've run into some extensive problems with getting them repaired."

Albany is home to many notable personalities that would be conducive to being immortalized in bronze.

Ray Charles is arguably the most well known and has his visage cast in bronze on the riverfront. At least one other Albany celebrity is in the process of having their likeness immortalized in statue form.

Taylor said that an artist is currently working on a mock-up of Tift that will be presented to city officials for approval before the full version is completed.

The location of the statue has yet to be decided.