Mayor Adams honors NYC essential workers who worked through pandemic with a plaque on Broadway

The essential workers who pulled New York City through the darkest days of COVID got their place in Broadway’s pantheon Thursday.

Almost a year after marching down the Canyon of Heroes in a parade to commemorate their contributions, a handful of the workers stood across the street from City Hall as Mayor Adams and several other officials unveiled a plaque honoring them.

“Those who stocked our shelves in the grocery stores and delivered our Uber Eats, who made sure that our schools were open to provide good meals on the go — these were the heroes of our city,” Adams said. “New Yorkers are resilient. I say this over and over again. We do not run in the face of fear.”

The plaque, which reads “July 7, 2021 * New York City’s Essential Workers During the COVID-19 Pandemic,” honors the New Yorkers who reported in person to work even as the coronavirus was spreading virtually unchecked through the city.

They include sanitation and utility workers, cops, firefighters, medics, doctors and nurses, among many others.

Their plaque is one of more than 200 markers on the Broadway sidewalk in Lower Manhattan that were dedicated commemorate the ticker tape parades that have taken place there, starting in 1886 when the Statue of Liberty was dedicated.

Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine called the honor “richly deserved,” considering the fact that, at the height of the pandemic, while essential workers were doing their jobs, hundreds of people were dying of COVID each day.

“Some of us had the privilege at that time — and it was absolutely a privilege — to work from home. Some New Yorkers didn’t have those kinds of jobs — because our city needed them to show up, to protect us, to serve us, to care for us, to keep us moving, to keep our infrastructure running, to keep our communication systems functioning,” Levine said. “Those New Yorkers could have walked away, and they didn’t. They were there for us at enormous risk to themselves.”