Columbus Monument

About this property

The Columbus Monument is a 76-foot (23 m) column in the center of Columbus Circle in New York City honoring the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus, who first made an expedition to the New World in 1492. The monument was created by Italian sculptor Gaetano Russo in 1892. The monument consists of a 14-foot (4.3 m) marble statue of Christopher Columbus atop a 27.5-foot (8.4 m) granite rostral column placed on a four-stepped granite pedestal. The column is decorated with bronze projections representing Columbus' ships: the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa María; although actually they are depicted as Roman galleys (after the rostral column classical tradition) instead of caravels. Its pedestal features an angel holding a globe. The monument was one of three planned as part of the city's 1892 commemoration of the 400th anniversary of Columbus' landing in the Americas. Originally, the monument was planned to be located in Bowling Green or somewhere else in lower Manhattan. By the time Russo's plan was decided upon in 1890, a commission of Italian businessmen from around the United States had contributed $12,000 of the $20,000 needed to build the statue (equivalent to $430,000 of the $717,000 in cost in current dollars). The statue was constructed with funds raised by Il Progresso, a New York City-based Italian-language newspaper. Russo created parts of the Columbus Column in his Rome studio and in other workshops in Italy; the bronze elements were cast in the Nelli Foundry. The completed column was shipped to the United States in September 1892 to be placed within the "circle at Fifty-ninth Street and Eighth Avenue". Once the statue arrived in Manhattan, it was quickly transported to the circle. The monument was officially unveiled with a ceremony on October 12, 1892, as part of the 400th anniversary celebration. Less than a decade later, when the original IRT subway construction commenced in 1901, one of the first stations structurally completed was the IRT Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line's 59th Street station, despite special engineering support that was required to protect the monument. During the construction of the New York City Subway's Eighth Avenue Line (A, ​B, ​C, and ​D trains) underneath the circle in the late 1920s and early 1930s, the Columbus statue was shored up with temporary supports. Even so, the statue was shifted two inches north from its original position, and the top of the statue tilted 1.5 inches (3.8 cm). As a result, the statue was repaired and cleaned in 1934. The monument received some retouching in 1992 to commemorate the 500th anniversary of Columbus's voyage, and in turn, the monument's own 100th anniversary. It was also rededicated in that same year.

Location

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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