Chicago’s two Christopher Columbus statues: A brief history
Controversy over Christopher Columbus is not new, but the clash between Chicago police and protesters in Grant Park last week has led to two Chicago statues being removed “until further notice,” according to Mayor Lori Lightfoot
“We took this step in response to demonstrations that became unsafe for both protesters and police, and to efforts by individuals to independently pull the Grant Park statue down in an extremely dangerous manner,” Lightfoot said in a series of tweets. “This step is an effort to protect public safety and to preserve a safe space for an inclusive and democratic public dialogue about our city’s symbols. It also will allow us to focus public safety resources where they are most needed — particularly in our South and West Side communities.”
Read more on the mayor’s middle-of-the-night action here.
Here is a brief history of the two statues.
Christopher Columbus Monument
Location: Arrigo Park (801 S. Loomis St., Chicago)
Artist: Moses Ezekiel
Created: 1892
Installed: 1966
Though the 9-foot-tall bronze statue was created for and displayed in the Italian Pavilion at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, it spent much of the 1960s stored flat on its back in a yard outside the Joseph Lumber Company on the city’s Northwest Side.
”We’ll find a place eventually,” said James Murray Haddow, then the vice president of the Municipal Art League of Chicago, in a 1965 interview with the Chicago Tribune. “He is too good looking to be lying where he is lying.”
The statue had been placed in a niche above the entrance to the Columbus Memorial building at State and Washington streets following the 1893 World’s Fair. That’s where it stood until the structure was demolished in 1959.
One reason why it was problematic to find the statue a new home — its lack of a back. It had been secured by a rod, which meant the statue could not stand on its own.
State Rep. Victor Arrigo, an Italian American lawyer, spearheaded a campaign to raise $25,000 to move the statue to Loomis Street in Little Italy.
”I think this is the first time that an artistic landmark has been preserved and made the focal point of a rehabilitated neighborhood,” Arrigo said in a May 15, 1966, Chicago Tribune story.
The statue was dedicated in this location on Oct. 12, 1966, and was removed from the site on July 24, 2020. The park was renamed for Arrigo following his death in 1973.
Christopher Columbus Memorial
Location: Grant Park (northeast corner of Columbus Drive at Roosevelt Road)
Artist: Carlo Brioschi
Created and installed: 1933
The 12-foot-tall bronze statue stood atop a 20-foot pedestal until it was removed early in the morning on July 24, 2020. According to the Chicago Tribune archives, even the creation of this sculpture was controversial.
In 1932, Illinois’ State Board of Art, in reviewing sculptor Carlo Brioschi’s models for this figure, announced, “This statue is so bad it should not be put on public display.” Several days later, however, the board members admitted it was the pedestal it objected to — not the statue. The piece, gift of Italian Americans living in Chicago and Cook County, was dedicated on Aug. 3, 1933, in Grant Park as part of Italian Day at the city’s A Century of Progress International Exposition.
The monument was again singled out in 1963 when a Tribune reader complained to the paper that a likeness of Benito Mussolini, former Italian prime minister and leader of the country’s National Fascist Party, was one of four bas reliefs included in the statue’s pedestal.
“What’s (Mussolini) doing with Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci, and Paolo Toscanelli?,” the unnamed Tribune reader asked. “Might as well have a bust of Hitler.”
Amerigo Brioschi, the sculptor’s son, told the Tribune the relief was only an allegorical figure — representing the Roman symbol for strength and unity — as are the three other busts on the pedestal underneath the statue.
“In no way was it intended to be a memorial to the Italian dictator,” said the younger Brioschi, who worked on the monument with his father.
SOURCES: Chicago Park District; Chicago Tribune archives
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