Nicholas Ciotola: A compromise on Pittsburgh Columbus statue
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Should he stay or should he go? That’s the question that is fueling a bitter division in Pittsburgh. The divide is not over the coming presidential election. It is about the fate of the statue of Christopher Columbus in Oakland.
Pittsburgh’s Italian immigrants first proposed the idea for the statue in October 1909. A Pittsburgh Italian-American cultural organization, the Sons of Columbus, spearheaded a community fundraising effort. In the late 1950s, Italy-born Pittsburgh sculptor Frank Vittor (1888-1968) was commissioned to cast the bronze statue of Columbus. The granite base was the work of Vittor’s brother Antonio and the Donatelli Granite Co. The statue was officially dedicated Oct. 12, 1958 — Columbus Day. The site was chosen because of its proximity to Panther Hollow, one of the city’s many Little Italy communities.
As an Italian American, I would personally like to see the statue stay. But the winds of change are no longer an intermittent breeze. They are gale-force. The statue has been in the eye of activists since 1992, the year commemorating the 500th anniversary of the voyage of 1492. The statue has endured much damage and plenty of debate. It seems that we may have reached the point where the tide of change is everywhere. Compromise may be needed.
This is easier said than done. Italian Americans are notorious for being opinionated. There is even a word for it. Testa dura in the north of Italy; capa tosta in the dialects of the south. Both mean “hard-headed” or “stubborn.”
Some Italian American leaders believe that taking down the Columbus statue will erase history. That’s not really true. The removal of such statues is simply the next chapter in their ongoing history. It’s not like taking down a statue removes the name Columbus from the thousands of pages of history written about him. Nor does the removal of a statue destroy the history of Italian immigrants in Pittsburgh. That history lives on in countless books, articles, restaurants, fraternal organizations, and library and museum collections like the Italian American Collection at the Heinz History Center.
Others argue that the removal of Columbus statues is disrespectful of Italian Americans as an ethnic group. But if you think about it, the statue’s removal might actually be interpreted as something about which to be proud. When they arrived at the turn of the 20th century, Italian immigrants were derided as an unwanted race of unassimilable peasants who lived in crime-ridden, impoverished enclaves. But today, their descendants are fully and gainfully incorporated into all aspects of society.
Columbus served his purpose by providing an icon to Italians when they were a marginalized ethnic group struggling to survive in a hostile land. Italians made the choice to consciously align themselves with a noted historical figure — a figure that, at the time, was revered by the dominant Anglo society. In so doing, Italian immigrants sought to earn that same level of respect for their own community.
Today, Italian Americans no longer need Columbus. We’ve made it. If the statue comes down, it reinforces the fact that our beloved ancestors successfully overcame all of that adversity and achieved the American dream.
If the current winds of change dictate that Vittor’s statue must be removed, why not donate it to a museum that can properly interpret its history and use it as a teaching tool to educate future generations of both sides of the Columbus debate?
But removal should not happen without replacement. In place of Columbus, the city should erect a new bronze statue on the very same site. I envision a three-figured sculpture of an unnamed Italian man, woman and child inspired by those iconic Library of Congress photographs of Italians arriving at Ellis Island, valises in hand, determination in their eyes. We’d be removing a statue of an elite figure only tangentially connected to the real Italian immigrant experience with a statue directly representing all immigrants.
A new Pittsburgh Italian immigrant statue would be a long-overdue tribute to the “birds of passage,” the thousands of young Italian men who came to Pittsburgh and laid the foundation for later chain migration of relatives and friends. It would also memorialize the central role of women, so often overlooked in the immigrant narrative. The third figure, the child, would emphasize the bonds of family as central to the immigrant experience, then as now.
The granite base of the current Columbus statue featuring relief carvings of sailing ships might even be retained as the base for this new immigrant statue so that there is a still a tangible connection with the original installation from 1958. To Italian immigrants, those ships had a deep psychological meaning. They viewed themselves as adventurers who crossed the ocean to explore a New World, just as Columbus had done centuries before them. With an immigrant statue on top, the ships on the granite base would take on a new meaning. They would no longer literally represent the ships of Columbus. They would symbolically represent the very experience of immigration itself.
There would no doubt be substantial costs associated with commissioning a new statue, retrofitting the base, and amending the official blue and yellow Pennsylvania Historical Marker currently located on the site. But perhaps this compromise is a way that the city can satisfy two groups at an impasse. It would acknowledge the now widespread and seemingly long-lasting reinterpretation of Columbus while still honoring the history of an immigrant group that made this great city what it is today.
Nicholas Ciotola, former curator at the Senator John Heinz History Center, is the author of “From Honus to Columbus: The Life and Works of Frank Vittor,” published in “Italian Americans: Bridges to Italy, Bonds to America” (Teneo Press: 2010).