Kathy Dickerson holds a sign in front of the Christopher Columbus statue in St. Louis in 2018. A similar statue was placed on White House grounds over the weekend. File Photo by Bill Greenblatt/UPI | License Photo
A statue of Christopher Columbus has been placed on White House property, a replica of one torn down in Baltimore in 2020.
The 13-foot statue of the Italian explorer was installed early Sunday morning. It’s a replica of one torn down and dumped into Baltimore’s Inner Harbor in the summer of 2020 by racial justice protesters.
The new statue was placed on the north side of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building facing Pennsylvania Avenue. The building is next to the West Wing and has offices for White House staff.
Pieces of the marble from the original were used to recreate the statue.
“In this White House, Christopher Columbus is a hero, and President [Donald] Trump will ensure he’s honored as such for generations to come,” said Davis Ingle, a White House spokesperson, in a statement.
The new statue was created by Will Hemsley, whose father, sculptor Tilghman Hemsley, was dismayed by the toppling of the statue. The elder Hemsley assembled a team of divers to find the statue and bring it up from the water. Will Hemsley used scans of the salvaged pieces to create the replica. The project got a $30,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities during Trump’s first term.
“This is Columbus making his comeback from the darkest days that existed five to six years ago,” said Basil Russo, the leader of the Conference of Presidents of Major Italian American Organizations.
“Columbus statues have long stood as symbols of pride and cultural identity for more than 18 million Americans of Italian descent,” Russo said in a statement. “For over a century, Columbus’s legacy helped Italian immigrants navigate prejudice and hardship, serving as a source of unity and belonging as they built new lives in this country.”
Though he has been widely considered the person who discovered America, Columbus never set foot on North American land. The Oct. 12 holiday actually commemorates the day he landed in the Bahamas. He couldn’t discover a land that was already inhabited.
Norse explorer Leif Eriksson is the first European believed to have sailed to North America. He landed in Canada 500 years before Columbus’ voyage.
Edward Lengel, a former chief historian of the White House Historical Association, told The New York Times that adding the statue was part of Trump’s “radical reshaping” of the White House grounds.
Lengel said, “What this administration is doing is turning it into a partisan battleground.”
This week in Washington
President Donald Trump presents the Commander in Chief’s Trophy to the Navy Midshipmen football team during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House on Friday. The award is presented annually to the winner of the football competition between the Navy, Air Force and Army. Navy has won the trophy back to back years and 13 times over the last 23 years. Photo by Bonnie Cash/UPI | License Photo
