‘We don’t want that controversy’: Statue of Italian immigrants to replace toppled Columbus monument

Nearly six years after protesters toppled a Christopher Columbus monument near the Inner Harbor, John Pica smiled with pride Wednesday as he officially announced the statue’s forthcoming replacement: a marble sculpture of an Italian immigrant husband and wife clutching their infant.

But Pica, president of Italian American Organizations United, the group that owns the Columbus statue, took a moment to address the protesters, too.

“I hope these kids that did this six years ago have had a chance to mature and appreciate how stupid and ignorant they were,” the former state senator said. “But that didn’t deter us.”

More than 40 people, many wearing clothes with the Italian flag and “Italia” embroidered on them, gathered near the empty pedestal where the Columbus monument once stood at Eastern Avenue and South President Street to hear plans for the new statue, titled the “Anonymous Italian Immigrant Family Memorial.”

Today, the monument is only a sketch by the artist commissioned to make the sculpture, Sebastian Martorana of Baltimore. The plan is to complete the new statue — which will stand roughly 7 feet tall and 3 feet wide — before the end of 2027, Martorana said. The white marble will be imported from the Tuscany region of Italy.

Pica said a statue of Mother Cabrini, the Catholic Church’s first American saint, was under consideration to replace the Columbus statue, which was dragged and thrown into the Inner Harbor on July 4, 2020, during protests in response to the police murder of George Floyd, a Black man. But Pica’s group ultimately chose a nonreligious image.

“There’s little controversy behind an immigrant family,” Pica said. “It represents all immigrants.”

The group, he said, did not consider replacing the old statue with another one of Columbus. The explorer, whose Genoese heritage was a longtime source of pride for Italian Americans, has become a contentious figure due to his role in the enslavement and the violent colonization of America’s indigenous people.

“We don’t want that controversy,” Pica said.

A Columbus monument, erected in 1892 and donated by Italian Americans from Baltimore, still stands in Druid Hill Park.

Monuments to controversial historical figures remain a hot-button issue.

In 2017, four city-owned monuments, including three dedicated to the Confederacy, were vandalized and quietly removed from public view. They returned to Baltimore in recent weeks following their inclusion in a Los Angeles art exhibition and are being stored in a secure facility, said Lauren Schiszik, executive director of the Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation, in a statement. Their location will not be disclosed.

Mayor Brandon Scott has made it clear for years that he sees no place for the Confederate monuments in public.

“They will not see the light of day,” Scott told The Banner last month.

Italian American Organizations United raised more than $200,000 for the new sculpture, Pica said. He credited Maryland Senate President Bill Ferguson for helping to secure $140,000 in state funds for the project. Approximately 30 individual donors also contributed, he said.

Pica is confident that the new statue won’t meet the same fate as the Columbus monument, which was recovered from the harbor and now stands in a plaza on the grounds of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington, D.C.

Twenty-four-hour surveillance cameras will monitor the site, he said. There’s also now a fence around the pedestal, which the new immigrant family statue will be affixed to by steel rods. The Columbus statue simply sat on the pedestal.

“If you try to deface or damage that statue, no matter how tall you are or how short you are, you’ll pay and be prosecuted,” Pica said.

Tom Regnante of Little Italy, who attended Wednesday’s announcement, said he watched the protesters take down the Columbus statue in 2020, describing it as “very sad for the Italian American community.” But he’s pleased that a depiction of an immigrant family will now stand in its place.

“I stand on the shoulders of giants in my family, and I know many people here feel the same way,” Regnante said. “So I think it’s entirely appropriate and fitting that that’s the statue that will come here.”