| Christopher Columbus Waterfront Park | |
|---|---|
 Aerial view of the park in 2016 | |
 | |
| Type | Public Park |
| Location | Boston |
| Coordinates | 42°21′40″N71°03′06″W / 42.3612°N 71.0516°W |
| Created | 1967 |
The Christopher Columbus Waterfront Park is a public park in the Boston's North End. It is considered the start of the Boston Irish heritage trail.
According to a self-published work by the Massachusetts State Council of the Knights of Columbus, in 1967, their organization voted to establish a non-profit corporation to construct affordable housing. [1] The Boston Redevelopment Authority selected them to develop a parcel, but the Supreme Council of the Order did not like the idea. [1] The Massachusetts State Council constructed the Christopher Columbus Waterfront Park instead in honor of their patron, Christopher Columbus. [1]
Other sources suggest the park was originally going to be known as Waterfront Park, planned by the efforts of local banker Frank S. Christian (d. 1970), [2] the placement of an Italian marble statue of Columbus was entirely ad hoc, and the park was only renamed for Christopher Columbus through the efforts of local provocateur Arthur Stivaletta with the approval of Mayor Kevin White in the weeks prior to his 1979 reelection with new-found Italian-American support. [3] [4]
The Massachusetts Beirut Memorial on the site was dedicated in the park in 1992.
In 1999, the director of the Massachusetts Historical Society denounced the park as a poor use of city resources with inappropriate symbolism, observing that Boston has no connection to Christopher Columbus. He recommended restoring the park to commemorate its historical use as a fishing wharf. [5]
The Columbus statue was frequently vandalized: with red paint and the word "murderer" in 2004, beheaded for the first time in 2006, and spray painted with "Black Lives Matter" in 2015. [6] Most recently, in the early morning hours of June 9, 2020, the head portion of the statue of Columbus was removed and stolen. Mayor Marty Walsh said the remaining portion of the stature would be removed and placed into storage and the city would be reviewing if the Italian marble statue would ever be placed in a high visibility location in the future. [6] Walsh announced a few days prior to Columbus Day 2020 that the statue would not return, and would instead possibly be replaced with one commemorating Italian immigrants to America under the guidance of the Boston Art Commission. [7] [8]
Paul Andrew Dever was an American Democratic politician from Boston, Massachusetts. He served as the 58th Governor of Massachusetts and was its youngest-ever Attorney General. Among his notable accomplishments was the construction of Boston’s circumferential highway Route 128, then called "Dever’s Folley," which was later expanded to Interstate 95, one of the most used national highways.
John W. McDevitt was the eleventh Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus from 1964 to 1977.
John Edward Swift was an American judge who served as the ninth Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus from October 24, 1945, to August 31, 1953.
Columbus Circle is a neighborhood and plaza in the downtown section of Syracuse, New York, United States. At the center of the circle is a large fountain and the Columbus Monument, designed by the Syracuse-born architect Dwight James Baum and dedicated in 1934. Columbus Circle is home to Syracuse's two cathedrals, the Episcopalian St. Paul's Cathedral and the Roman Catholic Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, as well as the Onondaga County Courthouse and the John H. Mulroy Civic Center.
Marconi Plaza is an urban park square located in South Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. The plaza was named to recognize the 20th-century cultural identity in Philadelphia of the surrounding Italian-American enclave neighborhood and became the designation location of the annual Columbus Day Parade.
Columbus is a historic statue in Providence, Rhode Island, United States which formerly stood on Elmwood Avenue in Columbus Square. The statue is a bronze cast of a sterling silver statue which was created by Rhode Island's Gorham Manufacturing Company for the 1892 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The original silver statue was not meant for permanent exhibition, but rather as a demonstration of the skills of the Gorham Company, and was later melted down. The bronze cast was dedicated November 8, 1893 as a gift from the Elmwood Association to the City of Providence. The statue was created in 1893 by Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2001. It was removed from Columbus Square in 2020 by the City of Providence.
Christopher Columbus is a bronze statue by sculptor Carlo Brioschi. The statue of Christopher Columbus was installed in Chicago's Grant Park, in the U.S. state of Illinois. Created by the Milanese-born sculptor and installed in 1933, it was set on an exedra and pedestal designed with the help of architect Clarence H. Johnston. It was removed and put in storage in 2020.
Bayfront Park is a 32-acre (13 ha) public, urban park in Downtown Miami, Florida on Biscayne Bay. The Chairman to the trust is Ary Shaeban. Located in the park is a bronze statue of Christopher Columbus sculpted by Count Vittorio di Colbertaldo of Verona, one of Benito Mussolini’s hand picked ceremonial bodyguards known as the “Black Musketeers.”
An outdoor 1992 bronze sculpture of Christopher Columbus by Joe Incrapera was installed in Houston's Bell Park, in the U.S. state of Texas. It was later removed in 2020 after a history of vandalism.
Christopher Columbus, or simply Columbus, is a 1955 sculpture by Edoardo Alfieri, originally installed outside Columbus, Ohio's City Hall, in the United States. The statue was unveiled in 1955, celebrating Christopher Columbus's voyages to the New World. It was removed in July 2020, in light of the explorer's abusive relationship with indigenous Americans.
Joseph C. Pelletier was district attorney of Suffolk County, Massachusetts, and the Supreme Advocate of the Knights of Columbus. He was removed as district attorney and disbarred for blackmail and extortion.
William J. Day was a judge from South Boston, Massachusetts and the ninth state deputy of the Massachusetts Knights of Columbus. William J. Day Boulevard is named for him.
A statue of Christopher Columbus was installed in Christopher Columbus Waterfront Park, in Boston's North End, in the U.S. state of Massachusetts. On June 11, 2020, the statue was removed for an undisclosed period after it was decapitated by protestors on the evening of June 9, 2020.
A statue of Christopher Columbus was installed in Richmond, Virginia in 1927, where it stood until 2020 when it was torn down by protestors in the wake of the murder of George Floyd and thrown into a nearby lake.
A 1959 statue of Christopher Columbus by Alfred Solani was installed on the Columbus State Community College's downtown campus in Columbus, Ohio, United States. The monument is one of three in Columbus commemorating the explorer. The statue was removed June 19, 2020.
The Christopher Columbus statue in Newburgh, New York, was erected in 1992 by UNICO, an Italian American service organization active in the city. At the time, the majority of white residents in the city were Italian American, and as with most Columbus monuments, felt the statue represented their community. It commemorated the 500th anniversary of Columbus's voyage in 1492. This monument is one of two in the city conceived in recognition of Italian Americans.
The New London, Connecticut statue of Christopher Columbus was a marble statue installed in the city from 1928 to 2020. In June, 2020 the New London City council voted to remove the statue from public land.
The Middletown, Connecticut Christopher Columbus statue was a memorial to Columbus that was installed in the city's Harbor Park. The sculpture was donated to the city in 1996 by the Italian American Civic Order, the Italian Society of Middletown and local Italian-American families.
The Christopher Columbus Monument was a marble statue of the explorer Christopher Columbus in the Little Italy neighborhood of Downtown Baltimore, Maryland. The monument was brought down by protesters and dumped into the Inner Harbor on July 4, 2020, one of numerous monuments removed during the George Floyd protests. The statue is being reproduced by the Knights of Columbus.
Media related to Christopher Columbus Waterfront Park, Boston at Wikimedia Commons