Geographical Distribution of Monuments for Christopher Columbus

Paper presented by Peter van der Krogt

at the 44th annual meeting of the Society for the History of Discoveries, New Orleans, La., 24 October 2003

A short remark in advance. I am very aware that for native Americans, Columbus and the commemoration of him is controversial and that Columbus is symbolic of much grief that they have experienced. In this paper I am leaving this question aside for now.

The first official recognition of Columbus as a so-called "discoverer" of America was on the occasion of the 300th anniversary in 1792. The first monument for Columbus was erected on this occasion in Baltimore, Maryland. Around the same time the new capitol in Washington was officially named the District of Columbia to appease those who wanted to name the country after Columbus. The name Columbus is found throughout American popular culture, national commemorations and memory. Many towns and cities across America are named after the explorer.
One hundred years later, by the 400th anniversary of the arrival of Columbus, all of North America joined in a celebration that lasted an entire year. Italian Americans raised the money necessary to erect a giant monument to Columbus in New York City's Central Park. Exhibitions, parades, and festivities throughout the country culminated in Chicago at the World's Columbian Exposition.
In that year and the following years Columbus monuments mushroomed all over the world, but especially in the United States. My research on the World Wide Web and during my holidays resulted in a list of almost 400 memorials all over the world.
So judgment has been passed: Columbus is honored for the discovery of America and Amerigo Vespucci is almost forgotten. In fact, I know only of one statue for him (in Florence, Italy).

Columbus-related monuments
We can distinguish roughly two types of Columbus-related memorials: those with a direct relation to the location where they are erected, and those without such a relation. The first group is the most logical: an important person is honoured in the places where the events during his life took place.
We find these memorials in three regions:

1. Italy, especially the Ligurian coast, where Columbus was born
2. Spain, especially the Costa del Sol, from where he sailed (the "cradle of the discovery of America")
3. West Indies, where he actually landed

4. Latin America, from Mexico to Argentina
5. United States of America
6. Elsewhere

Comparison of the first group with the second group shows a remarkable result: Not only are there more memorials in the 2nd, symbolic, group, but these memorials are dominated by statues and busts of Columbus himself (76 %), while the memorials in the regions with a direct relationship to life and travels of Columbus include only 40% of these personal monuments and it is the "other" group which dominates.
This can be explained by the fact that the memorials in Italy, Spain and the West Indies generally commemorate actions which happened on the spot itself. I will give you some examples of each region:

1. Italy, especially the Ligurian coast, where Columbus was born
It is certain that Columbus was raised in the town of Genoa in Italy. His exact place of birth is not known, and there are several places claiming to be his birthplace. Each of these places has a monument, of course.

• The birth house in Cogoleto shows a painting on the façade, which is probably one of the oldest memorials for Columbus. It includes an eight-line Italian poem by Antonio Columbus and dates from 1650.
  
• Bettola
• Cuccaro
• Outside Italy:
  • Calvi, Corse
  • Ibiza, Balearic Islands
  • Poio, Galicia, Spain

Genoa itself has a number of monuments, such as the main monument on the Piazza Acquaverde in front of the train station, the Columbus House - the inscription shows that even the Genoese do not claim to be the birth place of Columbus:

No house has a better name than this one.
Here in his paternal home,.Christopher Columbus
passed his infancy and the beginning of his youth.

2. Spain, especially the Costa del Sol, from where he sailed

Main monument is that in Huelva.

- In the town of Palos de la Frontera, from which Columbus left for his first voyage in 1492, are 20 memorials, but not a single one is devoted to the person of Columbus. I show you my website index page for Palos. There are statues in Palos, but only for the local heroes, the brothers Pinzón, the ship-owners and captains of Columbus's fleet.

- Nearby Rota honours Bartolomé Perez, a native of Rota and the pilot of the San Juan, a ship of the fleet of Columbus's second voyage. He is given a plaque and a bust. A ship model honors all the others on the first trip.

- The memorial in Sanlúcar de Barrameda, the harbor where Columbus left for his third voyage in 1498. This monument shows on a map of the Atlantic Ocean the track of this third voyage. It is a memorial from the fifth centenary of this voyage, in 1998. Curiously enough, there is no memorial in Cádiz, the port where Columbus left for his fourth voyage in 1502

- As a map historian, I mostly like of course the monument for Juan de la Cosa and his map in El Puerto de Santa Maria.

- As a last example the memorial that triggered me to make this Columbus Monuments Web page: a plaque in Madrigal de las Altas Torres, a small town north of Madrid. Here is the place where Queen Isabella was born. This fact was commemorated with a plaque, placed there by the Historical commission of Bexar county in San Antonio, Texas.
"Homage On the advent of the fifth centennial of the initial voyage of Christopher Columbus to America, the citizens of Béxar county, Texas, U.S.A., pay homage to Madrigal de las Altas Torres birthplace of Queen Isabel the catholic whose intellect, boldness of spirit, love of humanity and christianity, and material assistance contributed significantly to the discovery of the then unknown world on October 12, 1492."
Signed by the Bexar County Historical Commission, San Antonio, Texas, U.S.A., Dr. Felix D. Almáraz Jr., chairman.

3. West Indies, where he actually landed
Almost on every spot where Columbus set foot ashore is a kind of monument. On the island of San Salvador alone, where it is generally believed that he first contacted the new world, there are five monuments.

1. 1891 Chicago monument: The first monument on the spot was erected on the initiative of the Chicago Herald. It is a crude stone structure on a narrow piece of land between the ocean and the bay, with a marble plaque with an inscription and a marble globe. ON THIS SPOT CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS FIRST SET FOOT ON THE SOIL OF THE NEW WORLD. ERECTED BY THE CHICAGO HERALD JUNE 15, 1891. Undoubtly, this monument is related with the world fair in Chicago.
2. 1951 Tappan monument: It was put there on 25 February 1951 by the yawl "Heloise" while on an around-the-world cruise. This expedition was financed by the Tappan gas company.
3. 1956 White cross at the landfall: erected on 25th December 1956 by Ruth Durlacher Wolper
4. 1988 at the spot where the Olympic flame was brought to America for the games in Mexico.
5. A monument hidden on the ocean floor.

It seems that there is also a theory that the first landfall was not on San Salvador, but on Grand Turk. To commemorate this, on the waterfront in Cockburn Town (same name, different island) is a plaque claiming: GRAND TURK, FIRST LANDFALL OF CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS IN THE NEW WORLD 12 OCTOBER 1492

There are many other monuments at the places were Columbus set foot on Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Cuba etc.

The second group of Columbus monuments: Columbus as a symbol
This is the more difficult group to explain, even more since the majority of the Columbus monuments belong to this group. There are at least 150 Columbus memorials in the United States, and Columbus never set foot on the shores of what later became the USA. But before we go to the USA, let's look first at the other two regions.

6. Elsewhere
In Europe, outside Spain and Italy, are several monuments. They all have a symbolic value showing mainly Columbus as a discoverer among other discovers. In many cases he is one of a group. I will illustrate this with the Columbus memorials I found on my last trip to Vienna, Austria. I was very surprised to find five memorials there, while I expected none.
I will present them in chronological order.

• 1862 Handelsakademie: Next to the entrance of the Handelsakademie I der Wiener Kaufmannschaft (an economics school) are two statues by the sculptor Josef Cesar. The statue of Columbus: with a map showing the Americas in his left hand, to which he is pointing with his other hand; the other statue is of the 18th century Scottish economist Adam Smith.
• 1864 (or later) Columbusplatz (Columbus Square), this square was named thus in 1864. On the square a house was built - named Columbushof (Columbus Court) with two portrait medaillons in its façade: Columbus and Sir Francis Drake.
• 1881 Naturhistorisches Museum: at the top of the façade of the museum of natural history are many statues, among them four discoverers: Columbus, Vasco da Gama, Magellan, and Cook.
• 1912-14 Office building on the square named Am Hof. The building - now a bank - shows four portrait medaillons in its façade: from left to right: Johannes Gutenberg (inventor of the printing press), Columbus, Alessandro Volta (discoverer of the battery) and Josef Ressel (the inventor of the ship screw). I have no idea what relation these four have. I wrote to the bank, but did not yet receive any information.
• 1966 (?) Columbusgasse or Columbus Street, named thus in 1864. On the façade of a apartment block built in 1966 is this large mosaic showing a map of North America (Mexico is clearly recognizable at the bottom of the mosaic), with Columbus holding the Spanish flag (standing in the Great Lakes area) , one of Columbus's ships, a stereotypic Indian tent with an Indian chief and the seal of the United States (over Baja California). At the top are three large black or grey birds flying. I have not found any information about this mosaic.

5. United States of America
With 158 Columbus memorials the United States has almost half of the total number of these memorials.

Why are there so many of these memorials in the USA?

Jo Ann Emerson, United States Representative of Missouri's 8th district, tried to explain the enthusiasm for Columbus in the United States as follows (8 Oct. 1999):

"How did a man, who had no idea that he had opened the door to our continent become such a prominent figure in our national conscience? After winning freedom from the King of England, America cut itself off from the Old World and its history. As a new republic, America essentially found itself without a national history. Americans were left to create a new shared national story and heros. While the Revolutionary leaders were the obvious choices for our historical heros, they believed being deemed so would be undemocratic.
Americans, searching for a history and a hero, discovered Columbus. In Columbus, our new nation found a symbol of fortitude, pioneerism and discovery from the distant past.
Like Columbus, our Founding Fathers and early patriots found a way to escape from the Old World. Just as Columbus challenged the unknown seas to find a New World, the American revolutionaries challenged the established order to found a new nation free from kings and full of new beginnings. Columbus the explorer embodied the spirit of American discovery and progress as 19th century American explorers such as Lewis and Clark sought out to discover our frontier and our pioneers settled the distant plains. And each of our own forefathers, who braved the unknown to immigrate across the seas throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, displayed a similar courage and determination as Columbus in finding freedom and opportunity in America."

Emerson seems to have taken her inspiration from books like Columbus and Columbia, published in 1892. This work - as you see on its title page - includes the complete history of America with emphasis on Columbus.
In a paper delivered at the dedication ceremonies of the Columbian fair in Chicago in 1892, Chauncey M. Depew formulated "the lights which illumine our firmament today are Columbus the discoverer, Washington the founder, and Lincoln the saviour" (perhaps it would be a good idea to list the monuments for Washington and Lincoln in the USA, and see if there is any similarity with the Columbuses).
It is rather questionable if the nation's need for an "democratic" hero is the full explanation of the many, many Columbus memorials in the USA.

The first objection against Emerson's theory is the distribution over the country. Look at this map with the distribution of Columbus memorials in the United States. You see the distribution is not equally over the states. Of course, partly this odd distribution is caused by the population density, which is indeed the largest in the north-east. However, when we compare the populaton with the number of monuments, no relation is found: 7.5 million persons in New Jersey share 24 monuments, over 9 million in Michigan have only 2 monuments; The state of New York, with 18 million inhabitants, has 25 monuments, the 17 million Texans only 4. Three million people in Oklahoma don't have a Columbus, whereas the same number of people in Connecticut have 15. Moreover, if Columbus "embodied the spirit of American discovery and progress", why are there so many states embodying that spirit without Columbus memorials. This table shows the relation between the population and the number of Columbus monuments. The right column shows the number of persons (multiply by 1000) per monument. States not listed do not have a Columbus monument. Example: Massachusetts has 5,913,000 inhabitants and nine Columbus monuments, that is one monument per 657,000 persons.

State inhabitants x1000 number of monuments inh./mon. New Jersey 7,736 32 242 New York 17,950 24 748 Pennsylvania 12,040 14 860 Connecticut 3,239 15 216 Massachusetts 5,913 9 657 DC 604 9 67 California 29,063 7 4,152 Illinois 11,658 8 1,457 Ohio 10,907 6 1,818 Florida 12,671 4 3,168 Texas 16,991 4 4,248 Rhode Island 998 4 250 Maryland 4,694 4 1,174 Wisconsin 4,867 4 1,217 Michigan 9,273 2 4,637 Louisiana 4,382 2 2,191 Colorado 3,317 2 1,659 Missouri 5,159 2 2,580 Virginia 6,098 2 3,049 Washington 4,761 2 2,381 Indiana 5,593 1 5,593 Minnesota 4,353 1 4,353 Delaware 673 1 673 Georgia 6,486 1 6,486 Iowa 2,840 1 2,840

And so we must conclude that there has to be another reason for erecting Columbus monuments. This was not too difficult to discover. When you read the inscriptions on the monuments it becomes very clear what this additional reason is.
I show you a random choice of Columbus monuments with part of the inscribed text.

Garfield NJ	PRESENTED TO THE CITY OF GARFIELD BY THE GARFIELD CHAPTER OF UNICO NATIONAL OCTOBER 15, 1967	UNICO is a US service organization similar to Rotary, is membership is exclusively open to American men and women of Italian heritage.
Hoboken NJ	ERECTED BY THE PEOPLE OF THIS COMMUNITY UNDER THE AUSPICES OF THE ITALIAN-AMERICANS OF HOBOKEN
New York, Columbus Circle	PER INIZIATIVA DEL PROGRESSO ITALO AMERICANO
New London, CT	DONATED BY THE ITALIAN RESIDENTS OF NEW LONDON OCT. 12, 1928.
Other states
Walla Walla WA	DEDICATED TO CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS ITALY'S ILLUSTRIOUS SON	paid for by subscription by the Italian immigrant farmers.
Houston TX		Erected in 1992 in the park across from the Italian American Center
Indianapolis		Funded by Italian immigrants in Indiana
San Francisco		Erected by the Italian community of North Beach.

Conclusion
From this sample you see the involvement of the Italian population in erecting Columbus monuments.

I show you here a map of the USA with the percentage of the population of Italian descent. The largest concentration of Italo-Americans is in the northeastern states. The three states with the highest percentage are New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania, and these are the states with the highest number of Columbus monuments.

State inhabitants x 1000 number of monuments % Italians New Jersey 7,736 32 10.8 New York 17,950 24 23.1 Pennsylvania 12,040 14 9.9 Connecticut 3,239 15 4.6 Massachusetts 5,913 9 6.2 DC 604 9 .1 California 29,063 7 9.4 Illinois 11,658 8 5.3 Ohio 10,907 6 4.3 Florida 12,671 4 3.8 Texas 16,991 4 1.6 Rhode Island 998 4 1.5 Maryland 4,694 4 1.5 Wisconsin 4,867 4 1 Michigan 9,273 2 2.8 Louisiana 4,382 2 1.4 Colorado 3,317 2 1 Missouri 5,159 2 1 Virginia 6,098 2 1 Washington 4,761 2 .9 Indiana 5,593 1 .7 Minnesota 4,353 1 .5 Delaware 673 1 .4 Georgia 6,486 1 .4 Iowa 2,840 1 .3

This table shows the relation between the percentage of Italians (right column) and the number of Columbus monuments. States not listed do not have a Columbus monument and have all a percentage of Italians of 0.5 % or less. Source: U.S. Census bureau; 1980 census, Table 3a Persons who reported a single ancestry group for regions and states http://www.census.gov/population/www/censusdata/pc80-s1-10.html Generally, only 50% of the population reported a single ancestry group

And a both maps together for comparison.

Why the Italians? Why not the Spanish community?

"Among the thousands of Italians who with their genius have contributed to the advancement of our civilization, Columbus stands like a gigantic figure for he discovered a new continent and founded a new civilization which was to give to the world a higher conception of the divine rights of men. The great Italian navigator discovered America; another great Italian, Americo Vespucci, gave our country her beautiful name."

An interesting example is this initiative of single Italian immigrant. John Schepis of Sicily started a small shop in Columbia, Louisiana. Around 1916 he planned a bigger building.
"It would be finer, a fitting showplace, where one could desplay one's pride in the new country, and still the love for the old."

Italians want to honour an Italian, who played such an important role in the history of the world - and made the founding of the USA possible. Simply spoken: Without Columbus, no United States of America...

The people in Worcester, Massachusetts, exaggerated this statement, and inscribed on their statue, erected in 1978:

"Not even the mountainous waves of the mighty
Atlantic could halt the progress of the Niña,
Pinta and Santa Maria, under the guidance of the
great navigator, inspired by the Lord to go forth,
search for and find these United States of America."

Although it is understandable that Italian communities erect monuments for their fellow-coutryman, I can not explain why the Spanish communities don't. Suggestions are welcome.
Here in New Orleans I found yesterday a small Columbus memorial with Spanish origin. Plaza de España (at the end of Canal Street). Around a fountain are the coats-of-arms of all Spanish provinces. That of Huelva, from where Columbus sailed, shows a map of the old and new world with Columbus's ships and the dates 3 August and 12 October 1492.

I want to finish my paper with another opinion on Columbus' motives:

Lit.
Columbus Day: Celebrating the Pioneering Spirit of America. Weekly Column by Jo Ann Emerson, United States Representative, Missouri's 8th district, 8 Oct. 1999 (http://www.house.gov/emerson/col10899.htm)
Unveiling and dedication of the Columbus Monument, (Reading, Penn., 1925), with
- Chauncey M. Depew, The Columbian Oration.
- Ferdinando Colletti, The Discovery of America: Its Relation to World Progress.