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Chicago’s three Christopher Columbus statues: A brief history

Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s commission on monuments has recommended that three statues of Christopher Columbus should not return to their old spots in Grant Park or Little Italy, the Tribune reported today.

Controversy over Christopher Columbus is not new, but the clash between Chicago police and protesters in Grant Park in 2020, led to the removal of two Chicago statues “until further notice,” according to Lightfoot.

“We took this step in response to demonstrations that became unsafe for both protesters and police, and to efforts by individuals to independently pull the Grant Park statue down in an extremely dangerous manner,” she said in a series of tweets. “This step is an effort to protect public safety and to preserve a safe space for an inclusive and democratic public dialogue about our city’s symbols. It also will allow us to focus public safety resources where they are most needed — particularly in our South and West Side communities.”

Read more on the mayor’s middle-of-the-night action here.

A week later, Lightfoot removed a lesser-known Columbus statue from a traffic island in South Chicago.

Here is a brief history of the three statues.

Christopher Columbus Monument

Location: Arrigo Park (801 S. Loomis St., Chicago)

Artist: Moses Ezekiel

Created: 1892

Installed: 1966

Though the 9-foot-tall bronze statue was created for and displayed in the Italian Pavilion at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, it spent much of the 1960s stored flat on its back in a yard outside the Joseph Lumber Company on the city’s Northwest Side.

“We’ll find a place eventually,” said James Murray Haddow, then the vice president of the Municipal Art League of Chicago, in a 1965 interview with the Chicago Tribune. “He is too good looking to be lying where he is lying.”

The statue had been placed in a niche above the entrance to the Columbus Memorial building at State and Washington streets following the 1893 World’s Fair. That’s where it stood until the structure was demolished in 1959.

One reason why it was problematic to find the statue a new home — its lack of a back. It had been secured by a rod, which meant the statue could not stand on its own.

State Rep. Victor Arrigo, an Italian American lawyer, spearheaded a campaign to raise $25,000 to move the statue to Loomis Street in Little Italy.

“I think this is the first time that an artistic landmark has been preserved and made the focal point of a rehabilitated neighborhood,” Arrigo said in a May 15, 1966, Chicago Tribune story.

The statue was dedicated in this location on Oct. 12, 1966, and was removed from the site on July 24, 2020. The park was renamed for Arrigo following his death in 1973.

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Christopher Columbus Memorial

Location: Grant Park (northeast corner of Columbus Drive at Roosevelt Road)

Artist: Carlo Brioschi

Created and installed: 1933

The 12-foot-tall bronze statue stood atop a 20-foot pedestal until it was removed early in the morning on July 24, 2020. According to the Chicago Tribune archives, even the creation of this sculpture was controversial.

In 1932, Illinois’ State Board of Art, in reviewing sculptor Carlo Brioschi’s models for this figure, announced, “This statue is so bad it should not be put on public display.” Several days later, however, the board members admitted it was the pedestal it objected to — not the statue. The piece, gift of Italian Americans living in Chicago and Cook County, was dedicated on Aug. 3, 1933, in Grant Park as part of Italian Day at the city’s A Century of Progress International Exposition.

The monument was again singled out in 1963 when a Tribune reader complained to the paper that a likeness of Benito Mussolini, former Italian prime minister and leader of the country’s National Fascist Party, was one of four bas reliefs included in the statue’s pedestal.

“What’s (Mussolini) doing with Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci, and Paolo Toscanelli?,” the unnamed Tribune reader asked. “Might as well have a bust of Hitler.”

Amerigo Brioschi, the sculptor’s son, told the Tribune the relief was only an allegorical figure — representing the Roman symbol for strength and unity — as are the three other busts on the pedestal underneath the statue.

“In no way was it intended to be a memorial to the Italian dictator,” said the younger Brioschi, who worked on the monument with his father.

Drake Fountain

Location: 92nd Street between South Chicago and Exchange avenues

Statue sculptor: Richard Henry Park

Created: 1892

Installed at current location: 1909

Hotelier John. B. Drake, whose sons would later build and operate the Blackstone and Drake hotels, was one of many philanthropists to gift the city with public works of art in advance of the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893.

This 32-foot-tall coral granite structure with four drinking water basins was intended to provide free, ice-cooled water beginning on Oct. 21, 1892 — a national holiday for the 400th anniversary of Columbus’ arrival in America and also the day of the 1893 World’s Fair dedication — but the 7-foot-tall bronze statue of the explorer had not yet arrived from Italy. Though some materials to complete the fountain were also still in transit, “the work has been rushed so that it might be said that water had been drawn during the World’s Fair dedication,” the Tribune reported.

With the fountain turned off for the winter but its Columbus statue finally in place, Drake Fountain, then located in a courtyard on Washington Street between an old county building and City Hall, was dedicated on Dec. 26, 1892. Due to inclement weather, the dedication was held indoors.

The depiction of Columbus was panned, at the time, by Chicago police chief of detectives John D. Shea who called the statue a “stiff.” And, unlike other representations of the explorer already on display around the city, this one had some funky anatomy to deal with, “The lake-front Columbus had at least straight sturdy legs that were not ashamed of each other, while the City Hall legs have curves that would have puzzled his tailor, if long trousers had been in vogue in his days,” the Tribune reported on June 14, 1897.

Though intended to benefit people, primarily, the fountain soon became a “free barnyard,” the Tribune reported, with hitching post and watering hole for horses. Just five years later, it also became a garbage heap containing “the bodies of dogs and cats, a winter’s accumulation of old newspapers, tin cans, cast-off clothing, and worn-out shoes.”

In 1905, plans were made to move Drake Fountain to accommodate construction of a new county building. But where would it end up? During a heated meeting in December 1905, aldermen balked at the $3,300 cost to remove then maintain the fountain. Sculptor Lorado Taft said the city could afford to let this Columbus statue be put out to pasture, “It is not an absolute disgrace, but it is a question whether it would be approved today by the municipal art commission. For one thing, it is wholly out of proportion.” Public works commissioner J.M. Patterson noted, “while it is not a distinguished work of art, (the fountain’s) existence is justified by the fact that thousands of persons drink its water daily,” the Tribune reported. The fountain was temporarily relocated to the LaSalle Street side of city hall.

The South Chicago location was chosen in 1908 for the fountain against the wishes of members of the Catholic fraternity Knights of Columbus, which preferred the statue stay in the city’s center. Without delay, however, it was taken piece-by-piece to its new home in horse-drawn wagons.

Drake Fountain was rededicated in its current location on Oct. 11, 1908, featuring a parade of 5,000 people and a 10-gun salute from a nearby ship. The Columbus statue was removed from the fountain on July 30, 2020.

Check out the Tribune’s archives at your fingertips at Newspapers.com.

Sources: City of Chicago; Chicago Park District; Chicago Tribune archives