Columbus is lifted out of Wooster Square Park in June 2020. Lucy Gellman File Photo.
A nineteenth-century statue of Christopher Columbus hasn't seen daylight for almost exactly five years. Now, New Haven will have a chance to see him back in Wooster Square—just a different part of the neighborhood, and within the high, indoor walls of a museum.
That news became public Friday afternoon, in an announcement that the city has reached a new art loan agreement with the Hamilton Street museum Lost In New Haven. Run by historian and New Haven cheerleader Robert Greenberg, the museum will both display and contextualize the sculpture, including its long and complicated history within the city.
It was moved formally to the museum, located at 80 Hamilton St., on Friday. Greenberg, who has seen the museum through multiple iterations, is currently offering tours of the collection on Saturdays; tickets and more information are available here.
“It is a privilege to be entrusted with the stewardship of New Haven’s Christopher Columbus Memorial, an important artifact in the city’s history," Greenberg said in a statement from city spokesperson Lenny Speiller Friday afternoon. “Lost in New Haven celebrates the immigrants who built this city, and we also recognize that our community is built on the unceded land of Indigenous Quinnipiac peoples."
"We are committed to presenting this history in its entirety. We also believe in common ground, discourse, and community – and are committed to being a place where New Haven’s collective story can be told.”
It is the latest chapter in a years-long saga that began in June 2020 (or, depending on who you ask, in the fifteenth century). That summer, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, the city announced that the statue would be coming down, which it did at the end of the month. Less than a week later, Mayor Justin Elicker appointed a committee to find a new sculpture for the park, a process that ultimately took over a year (read more about that process here, and the theatrical city meetings it entailed here, here and here).
In July of 2021, committee members selected Marc-Anthony Massaro’s Indicando la via al futuro (Pointing the Way to the Future), which now stands on the Chapel Street side of Wooster Square Park. After years of fundraising, city meetings, drafting, casting, and finishing the sculpture, it was unveiled in June of last year.
But Columbus, who like Voldemort is often not even named in these conversations, has always remained a low hum in the background, in part because of a series of unsuccessful lawsuits that the Italian-American Defense League has filed against the city in the years since the statue was removed.
Supporters of the statue have advocated for it to return to the park, where Massaro's sculpture now stands. Opponents have pointed to its outdated, erroneous, and sometimes painful colonial history.
It does play a role in New Haven history, including the story of immigration in the Elm City. In 1892, New Haven's nineteenth-century Italian societies had to fight to put the statue in Wooster Square—the city's leadership originally suggested East Rock Park, according to New Haven author Anthony Riccio. The sculpture was recast in bronze in 1955; a memorial plaque was added in 1992. There is still a wreath-laying ceremony each year on the second Monday of October, recognized by some as Columbus Day.
Now, Greenberg and Elicker suggested, New Haven residents can acknowledge that full history, and wrestle with it too if they are moved to do so. Praising the beauty of Indicando la via al futuro, Elicker noted that the museum—which takes a long view of New Haven history—ultimately felt like the right place for safekeeping.
"Given the historical significance of the Columbus statue that previously stood there, it was important to find an appropriate place for it to go,” Elicker said in a statement Friday. “We’re grateful to Robert Greenberg and Lost in New Haven for agreeing to steward this piece of New Haven’s history and story, and we appreciate that residents and visitors will be able to observe the Columbus statue in an appropriate place and setting.”