“They created this version of the seafaring adventurer who is Catholic like they are and who was there first,” Paul said. An elite group of immigrants used the myth of Columbus to “create a sense of entitlement and empowerment,” said Paul, which ultimately helped them assimilate into the mainstream Anglo-Saxon culture. Once again, Columbus served as a figure of convenience, someone already enshrined in American culture whom Italians and Catholics could claim as their own. Half a century earlier, Irish-Catholic immigrants had endured a similar plight. Characterized as “Mediterranean,” they were seen as inferior to their northern European counterparts. Anti-immigrant sentiment was widespread, and Italians were met with violence and racism. (AP)Ĭolumbus’s role in American history shifted in the late 19th century as more than 18 million immigrants came from southern and eastern Europe - nearly a quarter of them from Italy. Soon Columbus’s likeness and namesake multiplied across the American frontier.Ī crowd of about 1,000 people gathered around the Columbus statue at Columbus Circle in New York City in 1933. Politicians lauded Columbus for his supposed “discovery” of America, and Columbia became an informal way to refer to the new country, popularized by poets of the time. Like the colonists, Columbus had also suffered under a monarchy and - most importantly - he wasn’t British. As revolutionaries plotted their independence, they needed a historical figurehead - a hero who could embody American idealism and unite the young country.Ĭolumbus was a figure of convenience, said Heike Paul, an American studies professor at Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg. From this print, you can see Broadway (Bloomingdales Road) to the left and Eighth Avenue to the right, with a young Central Park on the far right side.Explore the data Columbus as a shifting symbolĪlthough he never set foot in the continental United States, Columbus is the third most memorialized person in the country, behind Abraham Lincoln and George Washington, according to an audit from Monument Lab.īut it wasn’t until nearly 300 years after his death that Columbus became an American symbol. We greatly appreciate our listeners and readers and thank you for joining us on this journey so far.
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To download this episode and subscribe to our show for free, visit iTunesor other podcasting services or get it straight from our satellite site. STARRING: William Phelps Enos, Donald Trump, Sophie Tucker and a man with the extraordinary name of Teunis Somerindyke. And what should the city do about that Columbus statute, embroiled in a modern controversy? Join us for a look at this unusual section of New York City, a place of both music history and real estate headaches. A monument to the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus was placed at its center in 1892, bought and paid for by New York’s new Italian community.īut the circle had awkwardly adjusted to modern development, and architecture which has graced its perimeter had been uniquely scorned - from the ‘confusing’ Maine Monument’ to Robert Moses’ Coliseum, a dated convention center which eliminated a street from the city’s grid.
When the park was completed in the mid 19th century, a ‘Grand Circle’ was planned for a busy thoroughfare of horse-drawn carriages.
Columbus Circle, a center of media and shopping at the entrance to Central Park, has a history that, well, runs against the grain.
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