Marc Massaro
New version of proposed monument, with plaque.
Gone are the benches, planters, flood lights, and gravel walking paths.
The sculpture itself — of an aspiring immigrant family — remains in the picture, as a controversial plan to replace the former Wooster Square Christopher Columbus monument moved to a new stage.
That was the update offered Wednesday night at a meeting of the Wooster Square Monument Committee convened over the Zoom teleconferencing app.
The meeting provided an update on plans to create a new sculpture in Wooster Square Park to replace the Columbus statue removed during 2020’s Black Lives Matters protests.
The Monument committee enlisted Marc Massaro to design the replacement. It has sparked fierce debate among neighbors. Click here for a story of the committee’s presentation before Christmas to the Downtown Wooster Square Community Management Team and neighbors’ concerns, which ranged from aesthetics to which ethnic group’s immigrant story should be recognized. Some critics felt that many different immigrant traditions should be recognized; others argued that the Italian-American experience should be recognized in Wooster Square, and that other tributes across town recognize other groups as well.
The committee responded Wednesday night by reporting that many aspects have been removed from the plan. But the proposed sculpture itself remains as it is now submitted to the Historic District Commission, which next takes up the plan.
Click here to view the current iterations of the proposed design.
A public comment segment was built into Wednesday night’s meeting. But after the committee members talked among themselves, nobody from the public chose to speak.
The heart of the committee’s internal (though public) discussion was how best to make their presentation to the HDC: whether to show a range of options, for example, the monument with or without a fence; or simply to present the favored fence-less rendering.
They decided to show both, but to lead with the fence-less image; to point out that except for the explanatory plaques, the entire array is within the perimeter of the original monument (a serious concern of the Wooster Square attendees and HDC commissioners); and to emphasize that the sculpture will be covered with, as Massaro characterized it, “a coating that repels paint.”
The latter point was in response less to issues raised by Wooster Square neighbors than to questions by the dozens of people who have responded over the month since to a survey that the committee has put out online. Click here if you would like to respond to the survey, which is open until the end of the month.
As to the sculpture itself, the heart of the monument replacement, committee’s Co-chair Bill Iovanne, Jr. emphasized to his colleagues as the gathering concluded that “this sculpture that Marc was awarded is not subject to change. This is what people voted on, and this is the design.”
He added that the committee is prepared to negotiate with the HDC the placement of a plaque acknowledging donors and participants. The rendering shows the plaque, in a standing panel, outside the perimeter of the monument, the only element exceeding the original area. If that is troubling to the HDC, the committee is prepared to suggest an alternative, he said: To have the plaque inserted in the base, as some survey respondents suggested.
He termed the plan as now conceived “severely modified” from the original plan and evidence of the committee’s responsiveness to feedback from the community.
“We will continue to listen and it is our hope that the HDC will approve.”
There may be one more committee meeting, specifically to review final results of the survey, before the Feb. 9 HDC meeting, Iovanne added.