Garden Club dedicates statue near former mill
By Geoffrey Wertime
FLORENCE The Roebling Garden Club dedicated the Charles G. Roebling Statue on Sunday, culminating a five-year fundraising effort by the club that generated the $45,000 required to create the life-size sculpture.
”Charlie’s home,” said Roebling Historical Society Vice President George Lengel. “It’s just fantastic.”
The bronze sculpture of the third son of John A. Roebling was unveiled in a ceremony at the Main Street Circle at Fifth Avenue and Main Street in Roebling. The work faces the yet-to-be-opened Main Gate Museum, which sits three blocks away and was formerly the entrance to the Roebling Steel Mill.
More than 300 people attended the dedication, according to Mr. Lengel. The speakers were Joe Varga, of the Friends of Roebling; Rose Menton, of the Roebling Centennial Committee; and state Sen. Diane Allen, of the 7th Legislative District, which includes Florence.
Mr. Lengel said he was very happy with how the project turned out.
”It’s a beautiful, beautiful statue, very accurate,” he said. “It looks exactly like the pictures we’ve seen of him.”
The sculpture honors the man who designed the buildings collectively known as “the mill,” and built an entire village of 750 brick homes, as well as establishing a fire department and police department, a school and a general store. Today, all of the homes, the general store and the school are not only standing, but are in full use.
Paul Varga, who has been involved in getting the statue made and erected as a member of both the Friends of Roebling and the Roebling Garden Club, said the sculpture looked even better in its final form than it had in its early clay version.
”Every detail is right there,” he said.
The Roebling Garden Club sold brick pavers at $100 each and took donations from other clubs to raise the money for the statue, which was created by artist and sculptor Morris Docktor, of Pennington.

