Politics

Columbus Statue Will Not Return to Grant Park, Officials Announce

The statue of Christopher Columbus, removed from Grant Park amid massive social justice protests touched off by the police murder of George Floyd in May 2020, will not return to the lakefront park, Chicago officials announced Thursday.

Nor will another statue of the Italian explorer return to Arrigo Park in Little Italy, under an agreement between Chicago’s Joint Civic Committee of Italian Americans and the Chicago Park District to resolve a lawsuit.

Instead, the statue of Columbus that stood in Arrigo Park between 1966 and 2020 will be loaned to the committee, which plans to display it inside a building in Chicago that the joint committee is redeveloping into a museum honoring Italian immigrants on Taylor Street.

“This was a compromise to get this statue back in the community,” said Ron Onesti, president of Chicago’s Joint Civic Committee of Italian Americans. “It means a lot to the community.”

The fate of the Columbus statue that stood in Grant Park was not part of the negotiations between the committee and the park district, Onesti said, adding that its fate has yet to be decided.

Progressive groups had urged city officials to permanently mothball all three Columbus statues on public property, which they contend celebrate White supremacy and the slaughter of indigenous Americans.

A commission charged by former Mayor Lori Lightfoot with reviewing Chicago’s more than 500 public monuments as part of “a racial healing and historical reckoning project” urged all of the statues of Columbus be permanently removed from public property.

The park district will follow that recommendation and remove the plinth that anchored the Columbus statue in Grant Park from 1933 to 2020, officials said.

Public access will be restored to that section of Grant Park, and a “public process” will be started to determine “which new public art will call this corner of Grant Park home,” park district officials said.

“The Chicago Park District is committed to diversifying our statuary to ensure we are honoring Chicago’s rich history and diversity,” Chicago Park District Superintendent Carlos Ramirez-Rosa said. “Throughout these processes, we will continue to engage Chicago’s diverse communities.”

Lightfoot removed the statues on July 24, 2020, after the statue in Grant Park became a flashpoint for protests against racism and police brutality in the wake of massive social justice protests touched off by the police murder of George Floyd in May 2020.

The civic committee sued the city in July 2021 in an attempt to get the statue of Columbus returned to Arrigo Park in Little Italy on the city’s West Side based on a 1973 agreement the committee inked with the Chicago Park District to display the statue.

Although Lightfoot vowed that the statues’ pedestals would be empty only temporarily, she never moved to reinstall the statues, acknowledging they would immediately become a magnet for protests that could turn violent, requiring around-the-clock police protection.

Crafted in bronze by sculptor Moses Ezekiel for the Italian pavilion at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, the statue that stood for decades in Arrigo Park was moved after the fair to the second story of the Columbus Memorial Building at State and Washington streets in the Loop.

When the building was torn down 1959, the statue went into storage.

Former state Rep. Victor Arrigo, a vocal advocate for the Italian American community, pushed to find a new home for the statue in the early 1960s — just as Little Italy was being transformed by the construction of the University of Illinois’ Circle Campus.

The statue would find a new home in 1966 in what was then Vernon Park, but would become Arrigo Park in 1974, a year after the lawmaker’s death.

“The statue is an important symbol for the Italian immigrant community,” Onesti said. “It is a sign of hope.”

The Columbus statue that once stood in Arrigo Park will be replaced with a monument to someone “who is known for their contributions to Chicago’s Italian American community,” according to a statement from the park district.

Onesti said the new statue should honor Frances Xavier Cabrini, the Roman Catholic nun better known as Mother Cabrini. The first American to be recognized as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church, Cabrini cared for Italian immigrants on Chicago’s West Side.

The park district and the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events will lead a community engagement process to select the person to be honored and solicit proposals from artists interested in creating the monument.

In 2021, Onesti was so outraged by the removal of the Columbus statue from Arrigo Park that he transformed its former home with more than two dozen green, red and white banners emblazoned with the pictures of prominent Italian Americans — ranging from pop superstar Madonna to Antonio Meucci, the inventor of the telephone — underneath the phrase “proud and positive.”

But since Onesti did not get a permit from the park district, the display was removed.

While the agreement announced Thursday resolves the lawsuit filed by the joint committee, the city faces a separate lawsuit from a former attorney for the Chicago Park District who said Lightfoot berated him using obscene language and blocked a deal the park district made to allow a Columbus statue to be displayed in the 2021 Columbus Day parade. Lightfoot denied making those remarks.

The city’s third statue of Columbus spent 100 years on a plaza near the intersection of 92nd Street, Exchange Avenue and South Chicago Avenue on the city’s Far South Side.

It was also removed, and no plans to display that statue have been announced.

Contact Heather Cherone: @HeatherCherone | (773) 569-1863 | [email protected]

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