The proposed configuration of the old plinth next to the new statue.
Now that the statue of Christopher Columbus is gone from Wooster Square Park, what should happen to the pedestal that once held it up?
The Historic District Commission weighed that question on Wednesday evening. It voted to keep the pedestal in place without a statue atop it, a few feet behind the new sculpture slated for the park.
During the summer of 2020, the city removed the original Wooster Square Park statue after backlash regarding Columbus’ enslavement and murder of many Taíno people. Soon after, the mayor appointed the Wooster Square Monument Committee, which selected a statue replacement: an Italian mother and father with their son, pointing upwards, and daughter, carrying a book and wearing a cross.
In February 2022, the Historic District Commission OK’d plans for the new statue. Committee members initially envisioned that the current “plinth,” the stone pedestal that used to carry Columbus, would be partially deconstructed; they imagined a layer of the original stone holding up the new statue.
Eventually, however, the city Engineering Department determined that a partial demolition of the plinth isn’t possible “without damaging the the entirety of the historic structure,” as the department wrote to the Historic District Commission on July 12. So the Monument Committee submitted a new proposal altogether to the commission: to install the sculpture three feet in front of the plinth, while keeping the pedestal intact.
The plinth stones currently sport engraved words commemorating the year 1492 and the name “Columbus.” The Monument Committee proposed installing a plaque over those words with yet-to-be-determined text explaining the story of the Columbus Statue’s former presence in the park.
Monument Committee Chair Bill Iovanne said the combination of the plinth and the family statue “ties the old with the new, and tells a story of immigration that is welcoming to all people who visit the park in Wooster Square.”
More than a dozen people submitted letters and gave Zoom testimony on the matter. Most testifiers (many of whom are members of the Monument Committee) advocated for the proposal as it was submitted.
Monument Committee member Frank Carrano told called the proposed monument “a poignant yet powerful depiction of both the spirit and the tenacity of those who dared to seek a better life.”
Committee member and Wooster Square resident Sarah Greenblatt argued that the statue and plinth would take up “a relatively small space compared to the rest of the park.” The granite base proposed for the new statue would take up an additional 35 square feet of parkland. The plan also calls for a 21-square-foot trapezoid of quarried brownstone to connect the existing plinth to the new granite base.
Others were less pleased with the aesthetic dimensions of the proposal.
“If the plinth was going to stay in the park, it would have been better to design a statue that would have fit onto the plinth,” said Wooster Square resident Anstress Farwell, calling the plan “an awkward and ungainly composition.”
One letter-writer who identified herself as Diane argued that “adding the sculpture in front of the existing stone detracts from the beauty of the sculpture.”
The Historic District Commission's Wednesday meeting.
For Historic District Commission member Karen Jenkins, the question of whether to keep the pedestal raised a larger question of how to remember discarded narratives of history.
Jenkins said the pedestal’s continued presence would be “disrespectful” to the Indigenous people who advocated for Columbus’ removal, as well as to the new statue’s designer.
“Let’s be respectful and remove the pedestal,” Jenkins argued. She added that installing a statue would remove green space from the park, and that “from Chapel Street, you won’t be able to see the new statue” with the plinth still in place.
Jenkins’ fellow commissioner Dylan Christopher countered that when it comes to the meaning of the pedestal, “I feel like perhaps that’s outside of the purview of the Historic District Commission.”
In a voice vote, a majority of commissioners voted in favor of the plan to preserve the plinth behind the new statue. The proposal will next need a series of other approvals, including from the parks department and the Board of Alders.