What to do with a 5-ton Christopher Columbus? California leaders make plans for Capitol statue
Tall, regal and admittedly controversial, the marble statue of Queen Isabella and the explorer Christopher Columbus have stood frozen under the Capitol Rotunda for decades.
The Democratic lawmakers who ordered the statue’s removal this week expect it to be taken out of the Capitol before the Legislature returns from a summer recess. They have to figure out how to navigate the statue out of its historic spot without damaging the marble floors and ornate walls around it.
A hardhat-wearing construction crew winched away Jefferson Davis’ statue from the Virginia capitol earlier this week — but the marble sculpture of Queen Isabella and Christopher Columbus is larger. It weighs some 5 tons.
This isn’t the first time that the statue will leave the Rotunda.
From around 1975 to 1982, the statue stayed across the street as the Capitol was being restored. But despite pushback at the time from indigenous groups and the architect who led the renovations, Italian-American legislators succeeded in keeping the statue in the Capitol.
Fred Taugher, chief administrative officer of the Assembly at the time, doesn’t recall exactly how workers took the statue out the Rotunda. But, he said, the figures shouldn’t have come back.
“I think it was a bad decision to return it,” he said.
Assemblyman Ken Cooley, D-Rancho Cordova, said he doesn’t have an exact timetable on the move. Still, he expects the statue to come out by the end of the Legislature’s summer recess.
Then, he said, it could be cleaned and returned to the descendants of the banker who bought the statue in the late 1800s — D.O. Mills, once the wealthiest individual in the state.
A descendant of Mills did not respond to a request for comment.
On Tuesday, legislative historian Alex Vassar tweeted a photo of a 1981 letter from another descendant — the late Ogden Mills IV — to a state senator with a reminder of a deal that had reportedly been made over the statue when it arrived in the Capitol.
“I feel the aforementioned statue should either be placed back in its rightful position in the capitol rotunda or returned the heirs of Darius Ogden Mills,” the letter reads.
The sculpture was shipped to Sacramento in 1883. Cooley said its removal would give visitors an unobstructed view of the Capitol dome from the center of the ground floor — an opportunity that hasn’t arisen since the 1980s.
The plans come as scores of statues across the country have faced calls for removal in light of protests against racial inequality and police brutality. Earlier this week, a Sacramento statue of white settler John Sutter came down after being defaced a week prior.
Activists with the Statewide Coalition Against Racist Symbols say they’re now targeting the Capitol Park statue of Saint Junipero Serra, a Franciscan missionary who championed the mission system across the state.
Indigenous groups say the statue reminds them of the abuses, cruelty and cultural repression their ancestors experienced on behalf of the missions Serra helped establish. Pope Francis’ 2015 announcement to canonize the missionary also generated uproar among some California lawmakers and religious leaders.
The coalition has scheduled a rally at the monument Thursday afternoon.
