Tweed was liked by many New Yorkers, particularly those who knew him only by his lavish charities. One of these wrote the following letter, which the _Sun_ printed on December 7, 1870, under the heading “A Monument to Boss Tweed--the Money Paid In”: Enclosed please find ten cents as a contribution to erect a statue to William M. Tweed on Tweed Plaza. I have no doubt that fifty thousand to seventy-five thousand of his admirers will contribute. Yours, etc., SEVENTEENTH WARD VOTER. On December 12 the _Sun_ said editorially: Has Boss Tweed any friends? If he has, they are a mean set. It is now more than a week since an appeal was made to them to come forward and put up the ancillary qualities to erect a statue of Mr. Tweed in the centre of Tweed Plaza; but as yet only four citizens have sent in their subscriptions. These were not large, but they were paid in cash, and there is reason for the belief that they were the tokens of sincere admiration for Mr. Tweed. But the hundreds, or, rather, thousands, of small-potato politicians whom he has made rich and powerful stand aloof and do not offer a picayune. We propose that the statue shall be executed by Captain Albertus de Groot, who made the celebrated Vanderbilt bronzes, but we have not yet decided whether it shall represent the favorite son of New York afoot or ahorseback. In fact, we rather incline to have a nautical statue, exhibiting Boss Tweed as a bold mariner, amid the wild fury of a hurricane, splicing the main brace in the foretopgallant futtock shrouds of his steam-yacht. But that is a matter for future consideration. The first thing is to get the money; and if those who claim to be Mr. Tweed’s friends don’t raise it, we shall begin to believe the rumor that the Hon. P. Brains Sweeny has turned against him, and has forbidden every one to give anything toward the erection of the projected statue. Ten days later the _Sun_ carried on the editorial page a long news story headed “Our Statue of Boss Tweed--the Readers of the _Sun_ Going to Work in Dead Earnest--The _Sun’s_ Advice Followed, Ha! Ha!--Organisation of the Tweed Testimonial Association of the City of New York--A Bronze Statue Worth Twenty-Five Thousand Dollars to Be Erected.” Sure enough, the ward politicians had taken the joke seriously. Police Justice Edward J. Shandley, Tim Campbell, Coroner Patrick Keenan, Police Commissioner Smith, and a dozen other faithful Tammany men were on the list of trustees. They decided upon the space then known as Tweed Plaza, at the junction of East Broadway and New Canal and Rutgers Streets as the site for the monument.